


Watcher's Castle, Watcher's Crown

by daezil



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with (Limited) Magic, Alternate Universe - TMA Fusion, Character Death and Undeath (Not Necessarily Correlating), Horror, Multi, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23488969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daezil/pseuds/daezil
Summary: Getting promoted to Archivist is the weirdest thing to happen to Beau since she joined the Cobalt Soul. The archives are in chaos, the co-workers are kind of assholes, and the work is nothing but sifting through fake ghost story bullshit.That is, until a couple of strange statements turn into an actual-real series of monster hunts, and from there Beau's life only gets weirder.(Getting promoted to Archivist is the worst thing to happen to Beauregard Lionett. She does not know this yet.)[Fusion with The Magnus Archives. Prior knowledge of TMA not necessary]
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast (background), Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 18
Kudos: 98





	1. Carnivals and Curiosities

**Author's Note:**

> Stuck in quarantine, so I finally started working on the crossover idea I've been playing around with for a while now. 
> 
> This story does not strictly conform to canon for either CR or TMA and will pull from elements of both while focusing on a CR based setting. That being said, this IS still going to be a horror fic, so please mind the tags. Content Warnings will be placed in the end notes of each chapter so that those wishing to go in blind can do so, but in general you can expect recurring presence of blood and violence throughout, so please take care. 
> 
> Again, no prior knowledge of The Magnus Archives is necessary to follow the story.

When Beau first learns about the promotion she thinks it’s a joke. Head Archivist is a position bestowed upon the most trusted and disciplined of the Cobalt Soul’s monks, those who have proved themselves academically gifted and among Ioun’s most dedicated.

Beauregard is none of these things. She’s not even good enough at pretending for anyone to accidentally consider her any of these things.

Apparently, Zeenoth, newly appointed Head Librarian of the Magnus Branch and former bleeding-heart instructor to thickheaded new recruits, sees _something_ in her, despite the fact that he’s seen more of her bullshit than anyone deserves. Either that or he must really hate the Magnus Branch.

Except, when she sees the state of the Magnus Archive she starts to think that the guy actually has it out for _her_ , and of _course_ no competent archivist would be posted here unless it was as punishment. Because this definitely has to be some form of punishment. He’s still probably mad about the time she let a horse into the library – should have known he hadn’t actually forgotten.

Because the thing with the archive is this: Before Zeenoth was made Head Librarian, he was Head Archivist for the Magnus Branch, and some asshole called Dairon was Head Librarian. Zeenoth was only Head Archivist for about a year, and before that Dairon was Head Archivist. And the thing about former Archivist Dairon was that they didn’t have much in the way of organization skills. Or filing skills. Or fucks to give, apparently.

It’s boxes floor to ceiling – stacks and stacks of boxes and file folders and papers. There are supposed to be some desks in here somewhere, and an office-maybe some bookshelves. It takes the first two weeks to excavate enough to get to her office, which is just another extension of the file maze, and she almost quits there. It takes the newly hired archival assistants to talk her down, and even then she only backs down because maybe it would be a bit cruel to leave the two newbies to the wrath of an actually competent boss. She’s pretty sure neither of them did anything to deserve this post either except the crime of needing a job and not qualifying for working in the main branch.

It’ll be fine. Eventually. Beau will (eventually) bring the archive into the modern era with some digitization, Fjord will make sure they have an actually functional system for archiving that’s legible to a sane person, and Jester won’t get fired for drawing dicks on all the statement files. They all get a paycheck and it’s win-win-win.

Except.

“These aren’t scanning.” Beau tries not to drop the stack of files on Zeenoth’s desk like a corpse she wants off her hands, but she’s pretty sure she fails.

Zeenoth pauses at his typing, looks up with a forced smile. “Ah, Beauregard. I’m sorry, what seems to be the problem?”

“We’re digitizing,” She reminds him, taking a chair without being offered. “Or _trying_ to. Some of the old statements won’t upload. The files keep getting corrupted.”

Zeenoth hums thoughtfully. He glances at the statement on the top of the pile but doesn’t deign to touch any of them. “Strange. It’s not a problem with the scanner, or the computer?”

“Nah, the other statements scan just fine. Just not these so far.” She had watched Fjord try to upload them five times already and it definitely wasn’t just him being bad at working computers. She’d still give him shit for it, but still.

“I didn’t have much of a chance to try anything similar during my time in the archive, unfortunately,” Zeenoth admits. “I’m afraid most of my time was spent deciphering Dairon’s, uh, unique system of filing.” Which is the only reason they have stacks and boxes and file cabinets instead of loose papers tacked on walls and spread across the floors knee-deep. Still, Beau wishes Zeenoth had been able to get more done before being promoted from archivist to Head Librarian.

Her sour expression was too obvious, apparently. Zeenoth leaned forward conspiratorially, and she didn’t like the glint in his eyes. “You know Beauregard, this is a very special library.”

“No,” Beau groaned. Not this again.

“The only library dedicated to paranormal occurrences and lore in all of Wildemount.”

“Noooo,” Beau sank down further in her chair.

“It is possible-”

“ _Ugh_.” 

“-That there is a reason these specific files will not record by digital means.”

“They’re not _cursed_ , man. How would that even work? They’re just a bunch of stories how would you even curse that?”

Zeenoth’s lips quirked up into just a bit of a smile. Fucker definitely hired her as punishment. “You might be surprised. We’ve certainly seen weirder things come through artifact storage. Now, in the meantime, I might have a solution to your problem.”

Beau sat up reluctantly, raising an eyebrow.

“Dairon did occasionally deviate from pen and paper, I found.” The smile was still in place on his face, maybe a bit more sympathetic now.

Uh oh.

\---

“Beau~”

She’s only made it halfway down the steps into the archive when Jester’s voice floats up to her.

“Fjord managed to scan all the other files in that one box by the door. It got really boring after you left, so I marked them and put them on the desk for you, so you know that they’ve already been done!” The tiefling bounces on the balls of her feet, peeking at the files in Beau’s hands. “Did Zeenoth know what was up with the spooky files? Are they really _haunted_? Fjord thinks that they’re haunted and thinks we should burn them.”

Beau sets the stack down heavily next to Fjord on his desk, making him flinch just slightly. “They’re not haunted. We’re not _burning_ them.” Not yet, at least. Not unless she decides she really _does_ want to get kicked out of the Soul again.

The amount of disappointment on Jester’s face is probably something to be concerned about, but also isn’t immediately her problem. Beau isn’t the one who decided they were desperate enough to hire assistants from outside the Cobalt Soul so technically Jester’s shenanigans aren’t her fault.

“What are we doing about them then?” Fjord drawls. He has the sound of a man deliberately trying not to sound apprehensive.

Beau tosses the offending device Zeenoth gave her on top of the stack, this time with deliberate distaste. Fjord and Jester lean in to look.

“Is this a tape recorder?” Fjord asks, picking it up and eying it closely. “What century did Zeenoth dig this out of? It’s ancient!”

“Oh my god you guys, this is so _cool_!” Jester grabs the tape recorder from Fjord and clicks the ‘record’ button. “Hello,” she says in prim tone, “This is Fiona Fancypants of the Cobalt Soul. Super Secret Supernatural Detective.” She turns to Beau, grinning, “This is gonna be so _fun_!”

Fjord snatches the tape recorder back from her. “I think that’s supposed to be for recording the statements that won’t scan.” He glances at Beau. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Beau shrugs and starts towards her office. With any luck they’ll be out on time today, get an early start on the weekend. “So if you could get a start on that after you’ve finished with the statements you’re on now that’d be great.”

“Yeeeah, no,” Fjord says, stopping her in her tracks. “Sorry, too busy with the filing to work recording the spooky stuff right now. Just started on a new box and all that.”

Beau turns, frowning in a way she hopes mimics the ones she’s spent years getting from the Head Archivists. “I’m your _boss_ , you know. I could make you do it.”

Fjord’s poker-face doesn’t budge. “You could have Fiona Fancypants do it.”

Jester beams. “Yeah Beau, I can do recordings if you’re do busy with your super important boss stuff.” There’s at least three dicks drawn on the header of the statement she was reading over that weren’t there when Beau left.

Beau snatches the recorder and files from Fjord’s desk and makes for her office.

\---

Beauregard doesn’t even _like_ libraries. Doesn’t even like _books_. That her father had her sent away to the Cobalt Soul of all places has the be the pettiest form of punishment he could possibly think of, even if the monk schtick was pretty damn cool.

The point is, she’s not sure why she’s trying so hard. Everyone _else_ knows that she’s no good at the nerd stuff – if she’d had her way she’d be working in security or, hell, maybe even try her hand at instructing combat training. This archivist stuff - who is Zeenoth kidding?

It’s almost 6:00pm when Beau actually gets around to the unruly statements. Fjord and Jester had offered to stay and help when they found her still swamped with the usual backlog of work around 5:00, but she’d shaken them off and told them to go home. She lives at the Soul anyway, and as much as she likes to play herself up she doesn’t actually have any plans other than fucking around for the weekend.

She grabs the first statement off the top of the pile. The date is marked from only a month ago, which explains why it hadn’t had time to get too deeply buried.

 _Just one,_ she promises. _One more thing and then I’ll call it a day._

The click of the tape recorder is louder and more jarring than she expects it to be.

“Uh,” she says to the whirring of the recorder. “This is uh-Beauregard Lionett. Ar- new Head Archivist for the Cobalt Soul, Magnus Library.” Fuck, this is so awkward. “I’m recording the statement of…” She glances down at the page and it takes her a moment to find the statement giver’s information. “Uh, a Miss Adelaine Shipley.” She rests her forehead in her hand. Takes a deep breath. The whirring of the tape recorder continues, expectant. She sits back up and looks back to the statement scratched out in black ink on the page before here. “Statement of Adelaine Shipley, regarding… a very strange circus.”

* * *

Trostenwald is not a town that sees much commotion – the brewery families and associated business dramas notwithstanding. So when the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities rolled into town one afternoon and set up shop, well, it caused a bit of a stir. 

Adelaine was not immune to the excitement of it all, of course. It just seemed kind of silly in retrospect how riled up everyone got. It was only the opening day and near everyone in town was drawn in. But to be fair, when a charming man in a colorful coat invited you along and spun it like it was your _destiny_ , well, everyone could use a night out on the town once in a while. There was no harm in it.

She didn’t remember very much about the acts themselves, you understand. She’d been to her fair share of carnivals and traveling shows before, and this one was a bit more on the artsy side of things – dancing and special effects and some sort of story going on in the acts tying them together or something. Honestly she’d more enjoyed the juggling and fire-eating and stuff that went on before all that, but, well, that was kind of beside the point.

What she did remember, or rather what she can’t forget, is that right before it happened, the act got a bit strange – or, well, strang _er_. They had this one actor – the devil-toad, and she was mostly sure it _was_ an actor, not just a wild beast they brought in from Xhorhas – who had this whole bit alongside a little dwarf girl. There was some dramatic fighting, and then singing, such a lovely singing like Adelaine had never heard before…She could have sat there all night and listened.

Others in the crowd were just as enamored apparently. This old man in the front got up out of his chair, acted as if he wanted to walk right into the ring, reached out to the little dwarf girl as if to touch her – like he was drawn towards her.

Something happened. The mood in the air shifted, Adelaine felt – like something inside her grew taught like a pulled thread. Several more people in the front row stood, making it hard to see what was going on inside the ring. She never did get a look at what set things off, because of that – just that someone up front began convulsing, body bend double and spasming. First just the one, then a second, and then more.

She wasn’t sure if the singing stopped at some point or if the screams drowned it out. All of the people drawn to the front of the crowd, their skin began to peel back, twisting in grotesque stretches of flesh that curled back from muscle and sinew. She could move, could do anything for a moment, but watch as the exposed muscle melted from their bones to leave behind skeleton and hunks of meat and organs and howls of agony shifted into snarls through bared, gaping mouths.

They weren’t transfixed on singing anymore. Without that to focus on, the people turned monsters turned towards the rest of the crowd, hunched and shuffling like beasts, and that’s…well, that’s when the killing started.

The people too close to the front didn’t stand a chance. Most everyone who _did_ have the chance though, they ran as soon as the screaming picked up again. Adelaine was lucky – small enough to push herself through the crush of panicking people. She made it out – obviously. And she didn’t try to stick around and watch the fray, like some people did. She turned and ran and didn’t stop running until she was back on her doorstep.

They said ten Crownsguard went down before they got the monsters put down. Adelaine wasn’t sure exactly how they managed it, in the end, or how long it took the bodies to stop moving in the first place – how they were sure they were dead for good. She was glad they burned the bones, scattered somewhere outside of town.

The circus didn’t have a second night. By sun-up the next day everything was already packed-up and gone, though they say they’ve got the carnival master down at the jailhouse. Folks were talking about a gas-leak of some sort, or poisoned food or water at the carnival that made those people turn rabid.

Adelaine knows what she saw, though. Really, she wishes she could forget what she saw. But no one around town was willing to talk about it, other than to brush it off like it never really happened – a bought of violence, a collective hallucination maybe. Who knew what sort of strangeness carnival folk could bring to town, after all.

Maybe that was the right of it. Adelaine had a business to get on with, and if everyone else wanted to pretend like everything was business as usual, and try to forget, well, she couldn’t begrudge them. She just needed to speak the words, first, to anyone who might listen. Because some nights she lied awake and she swore she could still hear a girl’s sweet singing, melting into the sounds of rending flesh.

* * *

Beau shoves the follow-up request under Fjord’s nose on Monday on her way for her third cup of coffee.

“Um, hey?” from the way he squints at her he’s probably not much more awake than she is.

“Hey. Need you to do some research into something that happened over in Trostenwald for me.” Thank gods they’ve got a coffee maker down here. The employee kitchen is way too far away from her office, all the way up on the main floor. “You ever heard of the Fletching and Moondrop Carnival?”

“Can’t say I have. Not much of a carnival kind of guy. You okay?” He’s watching her pour her cup. Too late Beau identifies that pinched look he has as…concern? Trepidation? Something in that category.

“Yeah, why?” Heat sears her hand as hot coffee sloshes over the side of the mug clumsily. “Fuck!”

“You look half-dead,” he informs her.

“Thanks,” she says sarcastically. “You’re looking a bit green yourself.”

“Oh, ha ha. Very funny.” He almost, _almost_ lets the subject drop, but he presses, “Shitty weekend then?”

She want’s to snap at him – almost does – that its not his business. But she’s _trying_ to build better people skills. You know, since she’s a boss and stuff now. 

“Slept weird,” she admits. “Creepy statement kept getting to me, or whatever.”

Fjord raises an eyebrow. “Oh? I thought you weren’t bothered reading them. What were the exact words… ‘b-movie reject bullshit’ I think it was.”

Beau narrows her eyes at him over the rim of her cup. “They are.”

“I thought it was ‘stupid to think any of it might be legitimate’,” his air quotes are getting more and more sarcastic.

“It _is_ ,” she insists. Gods this is what she gets for attempting a conversation. “I’m a monk of the Cobalt Soul – I can tell when an account is legit or not. This shit _never_ is.” Almost never. No one needs to know about the shit in artifact storage.

“Ah come on Beau,” Fjord grins. “It’s okay to be spooked.”

“I’m not _spooked_ goddammit!” That projecting motherfucker.

“Not spooked about what?” Jester’s voice floats in from the doorway. “Wow Beau, you look like a zombie!”

“Yeah, thanks Jes,” and didn’t that just invoke images of creepy undead circus monsters. Ugh, fucking – okay maybe she was _disturbed._ Unsettled. She was _not_ afraid of some fake-ass horror flick shit. “Got anything new for me, or can I go back to going through reports now?”

“I brought donuts for everyone,” she says, setting down a large bakery box next to the coffee maker. Which, okay, that was actually kind of sweet. “Beau, I can help with recording the statements if you want, you know!”

“Oh, uh, thanks Jester.” That still didn’t sound like a good idea, but –

“Yeah, you know, if you and Fjord find them too scary-”

Beau slams her office door closed behind her and ignores the giggling from the other side. The pile of statements still sits on top of her desk judgmentally.

“Right,” she sighs, cracking her neck. She sets Friday’s statement aside and reaches for the next. She’ll show those assholes.

\---

The next two weeks drag. Fjord and Jester don’t manage to pull up anything particularly interesting about the Fletching and Moondrop Carnival or Trostenwald. There’s a news article about the incident that mentions notably fewer zombies but definitely more hallucinogenic drugs. There’s also an arrest report for the Carnival master, one Gustav Fletching.

It’s vindicating, but also weirdly disappointing.

The stack on her desk barely shrinks. It’s not that she’s avoiding recording statements. That would imply that she feels anything about the statements other than inconvenienced at the extra work. It’s just time consuming, okay? The archive is a mess and there’s reports to be made, new statements coming in that have to be sorted before they can be dismissed to the proper drawers. The humming of the stupid tape recorder gives her migraines or something – it’s irritating and her sleep schedule is all fucked up now. So what if she doesn’t feel up to tackling the things all at once?

The shittiest part is that they keep finding _more_ of the damn things. Just a handful of statements pulled aside every week that won’t scan onto any of the archive computers and get added to the stack, waiting for Beau to get around to it.

One rainy afternoon she’s so eager to not get around to it that she jumps at the opportunity when the receptionist lets them know someone has come to give a new statement.

The room where they take statements is small and utilitarian - cheap carpet and wallpaper, a couple of chairs and a table for writing on. The woman waiting for her makes the space feel even smaller with the sheer size of her presence – tall and well-muscled and imposing, like standing in front of a mountain given humanoid form. Her hair is long and pulled into a series of braids that she keeps losing track of when she tries to follow them with her eyes, fading out to white at the ends. She sits stiffly, and her gaze – one blue eye and one purple - has an edge to it. Her hair and clothes are damp, still dripping from the downpour outside.

Beau’s eyes are caught traveling in a triangular path from biceps to chest to mouth, and the room is stifling. _Shit_.

“Hello,” the woman says, and, huh, her voice is soft, much softer than Beau would have figured. “Are you the Archivist.”

“Hey,” Beau says and, fuck, that is _not_ the tone she meant to come out. “Uh, yeah. Archivist, that’s me. I’m Beau.” She manages to reach out for a handshake without making it weird.

“I’m here to give a statement?”

“Right,” Beau recovers. She sets the folder she brought with her on the table and brings out a pen. “This is the usual form. Just, uh, be sure to fill out the contact information at the top, in case we need to follow up.”

“I don’t, uh. I don’t have a phone number. Not right now.”

“Oh.” That’s something that might be weird, but Beau’s too busy holding back from saying something stupid like ‘ _How about I give you mine ’_ to really notice.

“That’s okay,” she manages. “Just uh, any way we can get in contact that works for you.” She pulls the lined-paper from the folder and stacks the pages neatly. “Right. Well, take as long as you need. There should be plenty of space to write, but if you need more pages just open the door and get someone’s attention.”

“Oh, uh,” The woman leans forward when Beau makes to leave. “This is – it’s a written thing then?”

“Yeah, usually. Is that…cool?” Shit, is there a reason that wouldn’t be cool? Does she need, like accommodations and shit? Do they _have_ accommodations and shit? 

“It’s just…Yeah, I mean I was just hoping…” Gods those eyes are trained on Beau. She’s going to die. “I am not the best at writing my thoughts down on paper. Is there any way I could talk about it instead?”

“Sure,” she agrees without thinking. “I’ll be right back.”

It’s only a couple of yards from the statement room to Beau’s office. She makes it in record time.

Once there she takes a moment to stare at the wall and scream internally a little. She grabs what she needs and heads straight back to the other room, the picture of cool.

“You okay there, Beau?” Fjord calls loudly.

“Shut _up_!” she hisses back before slipping back inside.

“Right,” she says, setting the tape recorder on the table and taking a seat. “Uh, well, we’ll start whenever you’re ready, I guess.”

If the woman finds the choice of technology weird, she doesn’t say anything about it. “Right. Okay then. I’m ready I guess.”

Beau clicks record and the whirring of the tape starts. “This is, uh, Beauregard Lionette, Head Archivist for the Cobalt Soul, Magnus Branch.” Ugh, it felt even weirder doing this with another person in the room. “Recording the statement of…” Fucking shit, she hadn’t even gotten her name.

“Yasha,” the woman says when it becomes apparent that Beau needs her to step in. “Yasha Nydoorin”

“Statement of Yasha Nydoorin,” she recovers. “Regarding…”

“I’m looking for someone,” Yasha says. “A friend of mine.”

Beau clicks off the tape recorder. “Okay, hold up a sec. You know we’re not like the police, right?”

“I know.”

“We don’t like, investigate missing people,” Beau continues, wishing that she could tell if any of this was actually getting through or not. “If you want to file a missing person’s report, then you really need to talk to the Crownsguard.”

“I _know_ ,” Yasha insists, more snappishly this time, before slumping back in her seat. “I do not need the Crownsguard. I believe I am in the right place.”

“Alright then.” Beau switches the tape back on.

“Statement of Yasha Nydoorin, regarding the search for her friend…”

“Molly. His name is Mollymauk.”

* * *

Yasha still wasn’t entirely sure how exactly she ended up traveling with the circus for so long. She wasn’t sure what exactly she did _before_ traveling with the circus, either, but that is beside the point. The point is, about a year and half ago she met the Fletching and Moondrop circus, and, more importantly, she met Mollymauk Tealeaf.

Molly was a mystery in and of himself – a purple tiefling, which was weird enough, and he was a very, uh, colorful sort of person with a love of tattoos and talking up anyone who would let him get within earshot. He’d only been traveling with the circus for a little while when they met, and the two of them hit it off almost instantly. It was an easy sort of solidarity that they built between them. They were both new to the circus. Neither of them knew much about where they had come from nor had any plans for where they were going. They stood out in normal society – Yasha and her hulking, intimidating form that looked like she’d fit better in a biker gang and Molly who looked like he fit in a little _too_ well in a carnival.

Molly relished the attention, though, or at least was very good at acting like he did. He was very good at drawing people in, making them laugh, making them just a little less on guard. He spent most of his time drumming up business for them, and gradually she ended up spending most of her time keeping him out of trouble. It wasn’t anything glamorous like Molly liked to pretend sometimes, but it was…nice. She wouldn’t say she thought life with the circus was something that would last forever but, well, how things ended…she certainly wouldn’t have picked such an ending.

Their last show was in Trostenwald. It was…to say it went bad would be an understatement. There was… well much more audience death than they usually aimed for. Anyway, that wasn’t what she was here about, really. Yasha hadn’t been involved in any of the acts. Neither had Mollymauk. He talked up the acts, promoted the circus, and otherwise stuck to juggling fake swords and tarot readings. Neither of them were sure what went wrong, exactly, just that a commotion had started when Toya – a little dwarf girl in their troupe – had started her singing act with Kylre, one of our actors. No one was going to stick around for the investigation to figure it out, though.

It wasn’t hard to tell when things were about to go bad in a town. Part of your audience mutating and slaughtering the rest of the crowd was a pretty good indicator that things had gone bad, so as soon as blood started flying most of them in the troupe took that as a sign to book it. It’s not something they were exactly _proud_ of, but, well, that’s how things were sometimes. Sometimes the only person you can save is yourself. Yasha wasn’t sure where most of the others ended up, if they made it off the scene. She and Molly hopped in one of the circus vans and drove off into the night. That would have been it. Except.

Except one night a couple of nights later Yasha woke up to find Molly awake and shuffling through his tarot deck, staring at the wall.

He said, “Toya’s in danger.”

They hadn’t seen Toya since parting ways in Trostenwald, obviously. Yasha asked Molly how he knew, figuring he had seen something in the news or something like that. But he just shrugged and said he had a _feeling_.

Maybe it was dumb of them, but it wasn’t like they had anything more useful to do other than repainting the van and busking. They drove back towards Trostenwald a bit on Molly’s feeling, then skirted a bit further towards the Menagerie Coast. One evening Molly had her pull over to the side of the road, and they got out of the car. And then, he got that strange look on his face and started walking into the trees.

Yasha followed. Maybe that was also dumb, to let him go like that. But, well – she knew what it was like to be driven by a feeling. He had always had an affinity for the Moonweaver. She had thought, maybe…

They walked into the woods. Yasha got a feeling too, after a bit. A feeling like something bad was waiting for them. A heavy, tense feeling like the air around them was heavy.

They ended up finding Toya not far off the road – hunkered down in an abandoned campsite with Kylre. Yasha wasn’t sure if she was more surprised by the state they were in or the fact that she and Molly had actually found them – Toya was scratched up, drenched from a night of rain, and looking like she was withering away. Either way, they had found them, and they did actually look like they were in trouble, so she figured she would ask him to explain later.

Kylre was asleep, his hulking form hard to miss. Toya was awake, though, and she didn’t seem very happy to see them.

She begged them to go away and ‘leave him alone, he didn’t mean to, please leave him _alone_ ’, and that was when Yasha began to suspect that Kylre might have had a thing or two to do with whatever happened in Trostenwald. Molly tried to talk her down – they weren’t there to hurt anyone – was she okay? What had happened to them?

Kylre woke up. He, ah, he was not happy to see them.

Yasha had never been close with Kylre. Molly hadn’t really either. They had never especially had any problems with each other though. So, they were confused to say the least when Kylre put himself between them and Toya. The tension present in the air stretched. Yasha could tell – there was something wrong here, a look in Kylre’s eyes, a tangible feeling of unease when she met his gaze.

Molly either didn’t notice or was determined to talk him down anyway. He started talking like he always does, useless platitudes and small talk. He made the mistake of taking one step towards Kylre, stretching his hand out like he was going to pat his shoulder or shake his hand.

That feeling – that tangible tension like the air was _pulsing_ with something - pulsing with the blood pumping in her veins, growing hotter and hotter. 

Molly began to bleed, blood pouring from his neck, his hands, and his arm. Yasha thought he had been shot, for a moment because it was like he had holes in him. He shuddered, clawed at his skin as if it itched, and it flaked and tore in places, leaving more blood oozing down his arms.

Seeing that, it was like – it was like something inside her boiled over. She didn’t know what was happening – what Kylre was doing to hurt Molly or how to protect him. Her entire body _boiled_ with rage, painting her vision in a red haze.

She punched Kylre, she remembers. That was probably dumb. She didn’t have anything better to hit him with, though, and she _had_ to hit him. She had to stop him hurting Molly, had to stop him from hurting Toya or anyone else. She had to kill him. She just had the feeling pounding in her head over and over again – she _had_ to kill him.

Yasha wasn’t sure how many times she struck him, how long she clawed and fought and tore at Kylre and he tore at her. There was yelling – maybe her or maybe Molly or Toya shouting at them to stop. It couldn’t have been that long – the haze over her mind only took her for a couple of minutes, she thinks.

When it lifted there was blood on her knuckles, under her nails, caught in her teeth. A blinding pain hit her when she tried to move her leg. It had started raining – just barely, not enough to clean the red from her hands or dilute the puddles of it in the dirt.

Kylre and Toya were gone. So was Mollymauk.

* * *

Beau left the tape running, whirring away to silence much too long after Yasha’s soft voice trailed off and didn’t pick up again.

“So, uh,” she said once she found her own voice again, “does the name ‘Fletching and Moondrop’ happen to mean anything to you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Violence and injury, excessive blood/bleeding, body horror via zombification


	2. The Books of Blumenthal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone's feedback and encouragements! As a piece of advice in retrospect, maybe don't start a new fanfic while working on your Master's Thesis ^_^

Fjord and Jester are more than a little confused when Beau hands them another follow-up request for Trostenwald. Telling them it’s for a separate statement doesn’t exactly improve matters.

“Beau, Beau, listen to me,” Jester insists, grabbing her by the shoulders and leaning in close. “A beautiful goth goddess came and told you the zombie-circus was real, Beau. The cursed statement is real and so are zombies, Beau!”

“Nope, nuh-uh,” Fjord says, shoving the form back towards Beau. “No zombies, nope. There’s no fucking way.”

Beau purses her lips and tries to look…she doesn’t know, impartial or some shit. She’s supposed to be the voice of reason here dammit.

“I mean, this doesn’t _necessarily_ mean anything-” she starts.

“Boo!”

“Exactly!”

“But, like, you’ve gotta admit it’s weird –”

“Yeah!”

“Can’t hear you!”

She ignores them. “And I think we’re gonna have to like, actually do a little bit of digging on this one.”

“Yes!” Jester pulls her into a hug. Her arms are way stronger than she anticipated. “This is going to be So. Cool. You guys!”

Fjord shakes his head. “Now hold on. There’s an entire archive of statements here that you’re perfectly happy to ignore – the Empire’s only so big, so some of those have gotta be from the same place too! Why’re you picking the ones about _zombies_ to investigate?”

“Because zombies are cool, _Fjord_!” Jester released Beau from her chokehold for the express purpose of looking at him like he’s no fun. Which, yeah, he kind of is.

“Yeah, man, come.” If she has to deal with this shit, then Fjord sure as fuck does too. “It’s obviously not, like, _real_ zombies. It’s probably just some, I don’t know, some messed up magic or something.”

“That’s not _better_! All I’m saying is that you were perfectly fine turning a blind eye until a hot woman walks in here-”

“Oh, fuck you!”

“-and asks you nicely?” Fjord continues, ignoring her protest. “Doesn’t sound the most academic of reasons to me.”

“That’s not – that has nothing to do with it!” Beau insists. Gods, what an asshole. “Jester, back me up here!”

“I mean, he kind of does have a point, Beau,” Jester allows, because apparently Beau’s surrounded by slanderers and traitors. “ _But_ , we should totally do it anyway, because it’ll be fun! It’s a mystery, and we’re detectives now!”

“I didn’t sign up here to be a detective!” Fjord protests.

“You signed up here because Jester did,” Beau says flatly.

“And I signed up because the Traveler said it would be fun. So we _both_ signed up to do fun stuff. Like being detectives!”

Fjord doesn’t look enthused. Beau rolls her eyes at him. “Come on man, it’s just research.” And, come on, it’s been _weeks_ of just sorting and cataloging. If Fjord wants to sit around stacking papers all day, whatever, but she and Jester at least shouldn’t have to suffer with him. “Like, what’s even gonna happen?”

The look her gives her is one of a broken man. “Why would you even _say_ that?”

\---

For as much as Fjord complains though, research really isn’t much better than the filing. They take trips upstairs to the main library in turns, scouring the shelves for anything relevant that might help them on their way. And while there’s plenty of literature on zombies – seriously just like, a _concerning_ amount of literature on zombies – there’s nothing really that sounds like the type of incident that occurred in Trostenwald.

It’s one such afternoon when Beau has just given up her look at the history of alleged zombie sightings for the day and is heading back to the archives. She’s still so stuck in the post-research haze of oh-gods-I-never-want-to-look-at-another-word-again that she doesn’t notice the commotion at the reception desk until it’s too late and she’s right up next to it.

There’s a guy standing at the desk who looks like he’s been living rough for…probably forever. He’s leaning over the reception desk, clearly intent on whatever he’s talking about with – god, what’s his name again? Marshal? Marco? – the receptionist guy.

“I understand,” Marshal – wait, he has a nametag on: _Marius_ , that was it– tells the guy. “Unfortunately, we don’t really do that sort of thing here. Do you have an appointment with anyone?”

“No,” the guy says, and his words come out in a careful Zemnian accent, “I am just looking to do some research.”

“I understand that,” Marius reiterates, looking really uncomfortable. “But, like I was saying we can’t let anyone ‘just browse’, because – “ he catches sight of Beau. Goddammit. “Oh, Archivist Lionett! Would you have a minute?”

She’s not busy now that she’s finished up research for the day. “Nope.”

Marius leans towards her like a drowning man. “It’ll only take a minute! I was just explaining our library policy, and this, um, gentleman, had some questions.” Goddammit Marius.

Beau sighs and turns to the visitor. “Fine. Uh, can I help you?”

He has the sort of look on his face of someone who knows that they’re about to be refused, so that’s promising.

“Ah, yes, I would like to access some of the more, ah, in depth sections of the library.”

“Uh- _huh_ ,” Beau gave him another once-over, mostly on impulse. Nope, he wasn’t any cleaner the second time. “Look, man, I know we’re a public library, but we’re part of the Cobalt Soul. You can check out the main sections as long as someone’s there to escort you, but for everything else you need approval.”

“I understand that,” he says. “ _But_ , I am hoping to do some research, and I was wondering how I might gain approval.” His words come out in the sort of breathless rush that tells her he’s been through this before.

“Okay,” Beau says. “Research, sure. There any university or institution you’re affiliated with?”

His brow pinches, and, yeah, he probably knows that _she_ already knows the answer to that. “No.”

“So, a personal project then.”

He hesitates, just half a moment. “Yes.”

“Do you have anyone in the Cobalt Soul that could vouch for you?” Okay, now she feels like kind of an asshole. Obviously, this guy doesn’t have connections for shit, or he wouldn’t be stuck at reception in the first place.

“No,” he admits begrudgingly. “But-”

“Sorry man,” Beau says, and the guy looks so defeated that she almost means it, “Like I said, not everything’s open to the public.”

“Wait,” he says before she can escape. “You are the Archivist – correct? Does your archive take submissions?”

Begrudgingly, Beau pauses. _Oh, this should be good._ “We take statements, yeah.”

“About instances of the paranormal, yes?”

“Yeah.”

He hesitates again, probably weighing how good of a ghost story he can come up with on the spot.

When he speaks again it’s haltingly, as if dragging the words from his tongue. “If I contribute a, ah, statement to your archives. Would I be able to access some of your records?”

Beau crosses her arms over her chest. “You know most people come and give those for free.”

His voice pitches lower, barely audible. “I could…I might have relevant knowledgebase that I could…contribute.”

“To an archive of paranormal bullshit.”

“ _Ja_ , I suppose so.”

Beau raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t _sound_ like he’s dicking around with her. And, okay, it’s not like she has any work she’s dying to get back to. “A statement about your…relevant knowledge in return for access to our private archives. That’d have to be one hell of a statement.”

He’s somehow making even less eye contact that he has been. He mumbles in a rush, “I do not blame you for not trusting what I have to say. But I promise that everything I can tell you is the truth. _And_ it is of the utmost relevance to your archive.”

He doesn’t try to do any more convincing, and Beau just kind of gawks at him for a moment. She instinctually wants to tell him no. But, well, technically anyone can come and give a statement, and what’s one more bullshit story to add to the growing trash heap downstairs anyway. And, okay, he looks so pathetic that _maybe_ she feels just a little bad for him.

“Better be one hell of a statement,” she reiterates before motioning for him to follow.

He looks way less relieved than she thought he would.

She shows him to the statement room and then makes a beeline to her office and snatches the tape recorder off her desk before she has a chance to think too hard about it.

“Um?” Fjord asks as she’s passing by, raising an eyebrow.

“Trust me, we’re gonna want this one on tape.” Also there was no way she was going to sit in silence for however long it took this guy to write whatever masterpiece he thinks he might have just to have to turn around and read it in front of him right after. Efficiency and all that.

“Hope you don’t mind being recorded,” she tells their guest when she gets back to the statement room. The guy looks a bit apprehensive, but Beau can’t tell if it’s from what she said or just how his face is.

“That’s…fine.” He says after a moment. “Do you usually use a tape recorder for your records?”

“Nah, we save it for the really good stuff.” She slides him the contact form.

He stares at it blankly for a moment before laying his pencil down. “Um, I don’t –”

Beau takes the paper back before he has to explain what she already figured anyway.

“We _do_ have to have your name,” she tells him, placing the tape recorder on the table between them.

“Caleb Widogast,” he says. 

“Alright, Caleb, whenever you’re ready, then.”

He nods. Beau clicks on the recorder on.

“Yeah, this is Beauregard Lionett, Head Archivist for the Magnus branch. Recording the statement of Caleb Widogast, regarding…” she looks at him expectantly.

He speaks as if forcing the words from his mouth pains him. “Regarding a collection of some very dangerous books I worked with in my youth.”

The bottom drops out of Beau’s stomach.

* * *

Caleb Widogast grew up in a small town called Blumenthal, just outside of Rexxentrum, and ever since he was young he’d had the arcane touch. His parents had been excited – everyone had been, for one of their own to have such a gift. And not just him, in fact, but two other neighbor children as well. It was…everyone saw them as so bright, so special. Everything just seemed to work out for him – for all three of them.

Their unusual talent got all three of them accepted to the Soltryce Academy, against the odds. It was…the learning came easy to him. Magic came easy to him, or at least easier than it did to the other students. He was young, confident in his abilities, foolhardy.

After one year of study, a teacher named Trent Ikithon took an interest in the three of them. He handpicked them for an advanced track, under which they were to learn from him directly. They left the main school to study with him at his countryside home. They weren’t bothered by this. For all three of them to make it to the top of their class – it was a dream. They were going to protect the Empire, they and the rare magical abilities that they had somehow been gifted.

Trent was a cruel teacher. At first it was mostly arcane theory and learning to stretch what meager connections to magic they had. But soon, he brought them to their limits – past their limits – put them through extreme conditions to bring out their abilities. They didn’t care. It made them stronger, and that was all that mattered.

With time there were…other things they were introduced to. He couldn’t…it was hard to describe exactly some of the things they studied, later in their tutelage. Strange scholars came to visit, from time to time on occasion, and on the few occasions Caleb and the others were allowed to sit in the topics of discussion were hard to follow. These strangers brought with them strange items – magic artifacts that had no explanations rooted in mainstream arcanic theory. But mostly…most of the time they brought books.

Trent liked to collect them. He kept them in a special library that he had separate from the main one in his study and marked them with his own unique seal. They weren’t…Caleb wasn’t sure where these books came from or how they were made. Sometimes they were historical, sometimes poetry, or even novels. He had seen biographies, an almanac, even a picture book on occasion. The subject matter was always different. They never had the same bindings or author or publishing house.

There was _nothing_ linking them together, except that reading them did odd things. Horrible things.

The first time Trent had him read from his collection, Caleb had gotten half a page into what looked like a textbook on metallurgy when deep cuts started to appear on his hands and arms. He read until his blood ran too thick to wipe away and began to stain the pages, and Trent took the book from him.

There was worse than that. One that turned Astrid’s fingers black with mold the longer she touched the pages until they’d nearly had to cut off her fingers to stop the spread. One that drove Eodwulf to a madness where he didn’t recognize anyone he encountered for almost a week, and on and on and on, each more strange than the last.

Trent was sure that that if they could read just enough of the books to research them, he could find a way to control their powers. They just had to withstand the effects to learn how they worked. And, for some of the books they did. If they did not read _all_ of the book, just certain passages or sentences, then sometimes it was enough to draw out certain effects without losing something in return. It was within their reach – if only barely. It was the ultimate test, the ultimate way to prove themselves.

For days or weeks at a time they would unravel the workings of a specific book – pieces at a time and always with one of the others around to make sure they did not become absorbed. After a couple of years, they had dissected and cataloged dozens of books, and Trent was always adding more to his collection.

As the three of them grew more confident in their abilities to navigate the books, Trent began to have them practice. He brought more people to the house – criminals, deviants, traitors. They learned some degree of control – how to turn the books’ powers outward on those who were enemies of the Empire. They became – they felt powerful.

They went home to Blumenthal for a visit. It was supposed to be a time of celebration – they would graduate soon, and Caleb’s parents seemed so proud. Astrid and Eodwulf’s too, as well, most of the town really. They were the three shining stars of Blumenthal, their small town’s biggest success stories. Or at least, that’s how it felt until, they overheard their parents’ hushed conversations of dissatisfaction – revolution and uprising.

It was not a hard choice. They were Trent’s best students. They were loyal to the Empire above all else. They made a plan, the three of them, to take care of the problem. So, the next time they went home for a visit, they went prepared. Not with weapons or even the magic that they had so come to love, but with books, spirited away from that small secret library in Trent Ikithon’s countryside house.

It had been so easy, pulling the thin paper-back from his bag – standing in front of his childhood home in the dead of night with only a light spell to read by. And it was easy to read – to let the words fall from his lips and sparks fall from his fingertips. The fire caught so easily on the wood of the old house. It maybe went up faster than it should have, but he was focused on the book, and, well, despite the growing flames there never seemed to be more light for him to see the pages in front of him.

By the time he ran out of words the house was fully ablaze. It was beautiful, he had thought, and he had stood there and watched it burn for a while.

Astrid and Eodwulf found him, their own deeds done. They were there just as his parents began to scream. And gradually, Caleb began to realize that the flames he stared into were not so lovely, and gradually Caleb was less and less sure of the weight of the book in his hands. And suddenly Caleb was _not_ sure.

Upon hearing, really _hearing_ the screams of his parents, something inside Caleb broke. And the flames, the pyre of his family home, suddenly looked _tantalizing_. Welcoming – beckoning to embrace to him and his pain and his sins – to erase him from this world without his family that he had just created.

Caleb was not well, for a long time after that. He stayed at an asylum for a number of years, broken, burning inside his own mind. Some years later, though, another patient approached him. He didn’t know exactly what she did, but she took the veil of fire from his mind, removed the madness, only for it to consume her moments after lifting it from him.

He did not stay to help her, or to ask questions. He ran. That was five years ago. He has remained on the run, hidden from Trent Ikithon and those he worked with, ever since.

* * *

Beau turns off the tape after Widogast stops speaking, marking the end of his story. For a long moment there is nothing but the silence between them.

Eventually Beau leans back in her chair and releases the breath she’s been holding. “So, that’s pretty deeply fucked up.”

That’s…probably not the right thing to say. Shit.

Caleb bobs his head in what might be a nod or an acknowledgement, or something. He doesn’t say anything. Fuck. Well, doesn’t she feel like an asshole.

Eventually, she gives up on trying to think of something to say and reaches over to the shelf and pulls out a clean sheet of paper and a pen. She slides the paper towards him and says, “Show me.”

“What?” She’s not sure if he startles because of the paper being shoved at him or what she said.

“The seal your teacher used to use for the books. Draw it for me. Show me what it looked like.”

It takes him a couple of seconds before he picks up the pen. She waits him out, and slowly, methodically he scratches out the design on the paper.

“You have a damn good memory.” Sure enough it’s a perfect replication of the seal she’s seen more than a couple times she – strictly speaking – wasn’t supposed to know about until about a month and a half ago.

“ _Ja_ , I know,” he says, eyes unmoving from the table in front of him.

She sighs and takes the paper back from him when it’s clear he’s not going to be the most responsive. Maybe she should just hand him off to Jester, let her talk him around until he snaps out of the mental journey he’s on. She’d like to go on a mental journey herself, she thinks.

“We call them Scourgers,” she says after a moment, because she’s dumb and maybe a bit too invested now.

Widogast continues to stare at the table. He doesn’t look like he’s breathing.

“The books,” she clarifies. “The Cobalt Soul calls them Scourgers.”

Another moment of nothing. Then, miraculously, Widogast breathes. “We used to call them _Volstruckers_ , when we referred to them at all.”

“Volstucker?” The word falls awkwardly from her mouth.

“You are familiar, then,” Widogast backtracks, “with this particular type of book.”

“Yeah. You could say that. Never met anyone who, like, specialized in the subject though.”

Slowly, he drags his eyes up to the approximate area of her face. “You believe me, then.”

“Yeah.” Beau leans forward over the table and offers a hand. “Name’s Beau. Welcome to the archives, I guess.”

\---

Fjord is a little confused about how they ended up adopting a ‘guest scholar’. Jester, though, takes to Caleb like a dog to pocket bacon.

“Oh, so you went to magic school! You can do magic, Caleb?” She demands the first morning Caleb’s welcomed down into the archives and diving into the stacks with only a little trepidation.

He casts Beau a loaded sidelong glance, and Beau tries not to wince. She hadn’t given Fjord and Jester access to his statement yet – which the two of them were giving her shit for, even though they certainly didn’t bug her to go through any of the other statements in the archives. She _did_ give them a vague run down to try and keep them from bugging Caleb too much about anything too sensitive – the guy was a giant nerd and had worked with cursed books. The fact that he went to fancy magic school _might_ have been thrown in there at some point to qualify her letting him into their snooty secret library.

When it’s clear that Jester isn’t going to let the matter lie, Caleb admits, “I can. Do _some_ magic.”

“Oh. My. God. _Fjord_!” Jester swivels in her chair to make sure their co-worker is listening. “Fjord! Caleb can do magic too! We’re like, the magic club!”

_That_ gets Beau’s attention and has her putting her folder down. “Uh, what? Whoa, _we_? Like all of you?” Like, she can totally buy Caleb having magic, okay. He’s like, obviously a nerd. Fjord – _maybe_. But Jester with magic –

“Uh-huh, magic!” Jester grins and throws out her hands, and suddenly there’s a slam as the doors to the archive and Beau’s office slam closed and the papers on the shelves rattle.

– seems just a little excessive. Dammit.

Fjord’s giving her a kind of pitying look, the bastard. He could have at least warned her.

“Mine is a, uh, recent discovery,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m not nearly as, well, impressive as Jessie, but, y’know, I can do some stuff.”

“He can breathe underwater!” Jester interjects.

“Damn, Fjord.”

“And throw up seawater!”

“I can do that as well,” says Caleb. “That is called drowning.”

Was that a fucking joke? From Sadface McTrauma Man over there?

Fjord looks too affronted to be shocked. “No, it’s not _drowning_. That happened, _one time_ , and I wasn’t anywhere near water _actually_. The breathing underwater part is true.”

Caleb pauses in looking over pages at that. “That is not a common ability I’ve heard of. Your magic manifested on its own naturally?”

“Uh, yeah,” Fjord says, which, like everything _else_ in this conversation, is news to Beau. “About two months ago, actually.”

“That is highly unusual, to discover magical talent so late in life.” Caleb looks thoughtful. “Then again, sorcerers are extremely uncommon in general.” He looks over at Jester. “The fact that we have two working in the same place is, ah very interesting.”

“Yeah, real fucking interesting,” Beau says. She wonders if Zeenoth knew anything about that when he hired them. Might explain why he was willing to let in two outsiders – though it wasn’t like any of their magic had been helpful to the archives up until now. Probably just a fluke.

“I’m not a sorcerer!” Jester says, puffing up her chest and placing her hands on her hips.

“Oh, well, I am sorry for assuming –”

“I,” she says primly, completely ignoring Caleb’s apology, “Am _the_ Head Priestess for the Traveler.”

There’s a beat of silence as Beau tries to remember any gods, entities, or fuckheads called the Traveler. She looks to Fjord for help only to find a strained look on his face. He sees her looking and starts shaking his head surreptitiously at her.

“Uh,” she asks anyway, “The Traveler?”

To Jester’s credit, she doesn’t look the least bit crestfallen. “He’s like, super amazing you guys! He’s got these awesome powers – he can do all kinds of magic stuff!”

“Uh-huh,” Beau nods, ignoring Fjord. “That’s, uh, cool. You’re his _priestess_? He’s a god?” She might not have paid the _most_ attention in monk class, but she’s, like, ninety percent sure she’s never heard of this guy.

“Yep, and he’s _super_ powerful!” Jester insists. “I’ve known him ever since I was a kid, and he’s my best friend, and he’s been showing me magic so that I can be the best priestess ever!”

“Uh- _huh_.” Yeah this definitely sounded sketch. Jester looked _really_ excited about it, though, so, maybe she shouldn’t bring that up right now.

“You get your magical abilities from a deity?” Caleb asks. “That is rather old fashioned. I have only heard of a few people these days who manage a strong enough connection to use magic successfully that way.”

Jester practically preens. “Yep, I’m _pretty_ amazing!”

“ _Ja_ ,” Caleb defers. “What’s really amazing is that any of you guys find anything down here. Your archives are a mess.”

“Previous management,” Beau waves him off. “If you want anything specific, you’re gonna have to wade through all this shit with the rest of us.” Frankly, she gave it a couple days down here before he called it quits.

“The dating system is fine, if not a bit unorthodox,” he continues, squinting at another statement, “but there’s no system for looking up subject material?”

“Man, I don’t even think there was a real system for storage other than throwing shit around and seeing where it landed. We’re scanning everything, then we’ll work on a tagging system.”

Caleb sighs. “I don’t suppose you have set aside the ones that involve our more delicate works of literature?”

Beau shrugs. “I know there should be a couple.” There are a couple of the books themselves up in artifact storage that _should_ have some sort of explanation behind them. “Fuck knows where they are.”

“ _I_ can’t believe you don’t believe in zombies, but you believe in cursed books, _Beau_.” Jester teases, getting back to her own papers now that the excitement of talking about magic has apparently been sidetracked.

“Yeah, speaking of that,” Fjord cuts in before Beau can protest, “Caleb, you wouldn’t happen to have any ‘specialized knowledge’ on zombies, would you?”

The concerned wrinkle on Caleb’s brow that’s been growing this whole conversation reaches maximum capacity. “I can’t say that I do. Is that…is that something you study here?”

“It is now.” Fjord start’s launching into some of the statements they’ve been dealing with, and Beau uses the chance to tune out – take a moment to close her eyes and clear her head.

Sluggishness has still been pulling at her limbs these past weeks. It’s been getting better, slowly, but gods – as soon as she can escape conversation she’s going go crash in her office. Mid-day naps are something she’s allowed as Head Archivist, right? This whole archive rehaul is going to kill her, she swears.

\---

Apparently, Beau’s coming down with an extra bad case of being an _idiot_ on Monday, because, as she heads down to her office, she happens to think that, huh, maybe things aren’t going so bad.

She hasn’t had coffee yet, and she doesn’t really notice that the door is already unlocked when she slides her key into it. She steps inside, flips on the light, and does a fucking double-take.

There’s a little girl standing on her desk. There’s a little _goblin_ girl standing on her desk.

There’s a little goblin girl with a _gun_ standing on her desk.

“ _Agh_! Shit, man!” Beau shouts, jumping back from the desk.

“ _Tell me what you did to Caleb_!” the goblin shrieks. Her voice is like gravel in a blender. Crooked, needle-sharp teeth peak from behind her snarling lips.

Caleb? What the fuck is a Caleb – oh. “Are yo- Man, what the _fuck_!” Mark that as another karmic mark against being nice to strangers.

“I know he was here! Tell me what you did to him!” the goblin continues, gun levelled at Beau’s chest.

“Fuck, man, I didn’t _do_ anything to Caleb, alright! Just put the fucking gun down!”

“ _Lies_!” she shrieks. “You did something! He started coming here last week and now he’s acting _weird_!”

“Yeah, well, he’s kinda weird on his own, isn’t he -” There’s the deliberate sound of the gun’s safety being clicked off, “Holy _shit_ , man, I don’t know, okay?”

“Stop insulting Caleb! He’s very smart, and he just wants to use the library in peace!”

“You call this _in peace_?”

“Beau? Why are you shouting?” Fjord calls from the entrance to the archives. “Who’re you talking to?”

It’s enough of a distraction that the goblin’s eyes flick to the side for a moment, past Beau’s shoulder and through the office door. Beau uses the opening to dart forward, twist the goblin’s aim away from her and wrestle the gun from her grip. _That’s right, I’m a monk, jackass!_

Except now the goblin’s hands aren’t occupied, and just as Beau tries to maneuver her into a chokehold she sinks her claws into Beau’s arms and starts scratching and _biting_. Oh yeah, and _screaming_.

“Beau, what’s going on?” Jester asks from the doorway, having apparently arrived and caring more about her life than Fjord.

“ _AAAAAGH_!” the goblin clinging around her waist and biting into her bicep gives a muffled yell.

“ _Agh!_ ” Beau shouts, “call the fucking cops!”

“Is that a _goblin_?” Fjord demands, pulling out his phone. “Oh shit!”

The goblin suddenly releases her hold and drops to the floor. “Wait, wait! Don’t call the crownsguard!”

“Are you fucking kidding me!” Beau holds out her bleeding arm. “You just tried to kill me!”

The goblin sniffs derisively. “If I meant to kill you, you’d already be dead. I only intended a warning.”

Beau moves to strangle the little shit, but Fjord intercepts her, moving between them. “Alright now, everybody just calm down. You,” he jerks his head to the goblin. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Nott.”

“Not what?”

“Not your business!”

Fjord moves out of Beau’s way and she lunges. _This_ time she’s fast enough to make the choke hold.

“Good morning,” Caleb calls from the main room. “What is all the commotion…?”

His dirty face peeks into the doorway. The writhing goblin stops struggling, freezes. Caleb freezes.

“So, uh,” Beau huffs, hoisting the still pinned goblin up a little so that she can’t hide. “Is this yours?”

“Yes,” Caleb admits. “She is my friend, so please don’t hurt her.”

Beau scoffs. “Right, okay, cool. Can you tell her not to fucking break into my office and pull a gun on me?”

He sighs, swiping a hand over his face. The fact that he doesn’t look surprised at the accusation doesn’t exactly give Beau any warm, fuzzy feelings.

He addresses the goblin. “These people are not a danger to us. Please do not break into their archives and shoot them.”

The goblin doesn’t look convinced. “Are you sure?”

He twists his lips into something that could be a smile with some work. “Ja, mostly.” He looks to Beau. “Please, she will not attack you again.”

“Unless they deserve it!” the goblin corrects.

Caleb ignores her and continues his pleading look.

Beau groans. “ _Fine_ , but someone else take the gun.”

Once Fjord’s gingerly gotten a hold of the gun and switched back on the safety, Beau drops the little shit to the ground like a sack of rocks. The fucker runs over to Caleb and stands in front of him, teeth bared.

“Alright,” Fjord says. “Now that we’ve all calmed down a bit, would one of you two like to explain to us, what the fuck was all that?”

“Ja,” Caleb says, stooping down so that he’s at the goblin’s face level. “Nott, why did you sneak in here?”

“ _How_ did you sneak in here?” Beau wants to know. This is supposed to be a secure facility – run by monks for fuck’s sake.

They ignore her. “Something _funny_ ’s been going on with you,” the goblin – Nott, apparently – tells him, harsh yellow eyes suddenly wide and innocent. “You’ve been acting dodgy – around _me_! And the nightmares are worse again.” She shoots a poisonous look at Beau. “I know you said you’re doing research, but, Caleb, this seems sketchy!”

“ _Excuse_ me!” This, coming from the _goblin_?

“This entire institution is shady business, Caleb! They keep creepy stuff here. They’ve got eyes decorating everything!”

“We’re dedicated to Ioun!” Beau protests. “Eyes are her _thing_ , man!”

“This place is beneath you,” Nott continues. “Can’t we get you into a real library?”

“Now hold on,” Fjord says, “Caleb came here of his own free will – no one’s making him stay.” He makes eye contact with Beau, “Right?”

“Obviously I didn’t fucking kidnap him, Fjord!”

“No one is keeping me here,” Caleb assures Nott. “I picked this library because they have some very unique information.”

“Yeah, you can learn about haunted stuff here,” Jester chimes in, which maybe isn’t the most helpful point to make, but, fuck it, at least someone’s glad to be here. “We’re the best for spooky stuff!”

Nott certainly doesn’t look convinced. “I don’t trust any of this.”

“Why,” Jester asks, “do you believe in cursed books like Beau and Caleb?”

Nott shoots a downright scandalized look at Beau, and she can feel the entire peace talks crumble. “ _Cursed books?_ ”

Fuck. “Yeah, but like, they’re not actually in the-”

“ _Are you people crazy_!”

\---

So, here’s the thing. Beau likes Caleb well enough. More importantly he’s the only academic lead she’s stumbled upon since taking over the archives, and, well, she kinda needs all the help she can find on the academic competency side of things. Does he look and smell like he sleeps in a trashcan? Yes. Is she picky? No. So, maybe she’s willing to let some random homeless guy into the archives if it means payoff in the long run.

Here’s the other thing, though. She did _not_ sign up for Nott. She really didn’t, and she wouldn’t. But, since they can’t convince Nott that, no the archives aren’t _haunted_ for _fuck’s sake_ , then apparently Caleb and Nott are a package deal.

Beau’s not even sure what the goblin thinks she’s going to _do_ exactly, if something were to happen (which it won’t). She’s got a handgun and a bunch of rage packed in that tiny goblin body, but that’s pretty much it. Regardless, she refuses to let Caleb brave the archives alone, and so now they’ve got a goblin wandering around the stacks, wound tighter than a spring, ready to shoot anything that moves.

Beau almost accidentally punches her a couple of times when she comes around a corner to find a small hooded figure with half a doll mask pulled over the bottom part of her face, just standing there. It’s not ideal working conditions. She’s just glad Zeenoth hasn’t paid them any unexpected visits.

It pays off, though. Having an extra set of eyes sorting through the backlog of statements helps, and its only a couple of days before Caleb finds something.

“Beauregard, you mentioned you are looking for, ah, zombie related statements?” he calls across the room. They have him set up at the extra desk in the far corner, and he’s been sifting through one of the unmarked boxes of files.

Beau’s up and across the room immediately. “Yeah? What’s up?”

“I am not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for,” he admits, holding up the statement folder, “But it seemed to fit with the general theme. It makes mention of some undead creatures.”

“Huh,” Beau skims the pages. At the very least it doesn’t look boring. “I’ll have Fjord scan it so we have a copy and then get to work on seeing if we can follow-up.”

Except, low and behold, the statement does not scan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for arson, guns, and...brief mention of mold related body horror I guess?


	3. The Beasts of Alfield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for everyone's patience and support; the last two months were an unexpected series of medical emergencies amidst slogging through finishing up gradschool. But, I'm happy to be back now and will try to get back to updating more frequently. 
> 
> As always, content warnings are in the end notes. Enjoy!

“Okay, okay, okay. Statement of Bryce Feelid, regarding the strange activities of the gnolls surrounding Alfield. Uh, recorded by Beauregard Lionett, Head Archivist for the Magnus Branch.

“Right. So, uh, here we go.”

* * *

Gnolls were a nasty business, even at the best of times. Alfield had its fair share of problems: a suffering local economy, food shortages, generational family feuds, syphilis – but by far gnoll attacks were the worst. Gnolls were ruthless, hungry beasts prone to making off with livestock and occasionally attacking anyone who wandered off too far from town. It had been the bane of every Watchmaster as far back as records showed, and so far Bryce had been no exception.

When Bryce had been transferred to Alfield, they had been well warned about the local gnoll population that had moved into the old Rill’s Mouth Mines not far from the outskirts of town. Previous efforts to drive out the beasts had ended in failure, and it was obvious by now that the local crownsguard were under equipped for the ordeal. Backup would need to be called in from elsewhere, but no such reinforcement had been forthcoming.

They made do with what they had. The ‘guard had just enough manpower to deter outright attacks on the town in any case, and incidents were isolated to the surrounding farms. That changed about two weeks ago, though.

The gnolls came at sunset – an entire hoard of them, larger than Bryce had ever seen. They came armed with axes and knives, likely stolen from farm equipment and tool shipments intercepted on the road. They were…efficient in their ruthlessness, attacking the town directly and without warning. Bryce rallied the crownsguard immediately, of course, and rerouted everyone to meet the onslaught. It wasn’t so much of a contest, where they were able to cut off the beasts directly; guns were certainly more effective than the tools and makeshift weapons of a bunch of creatures that were more fit for using claws than tools anyway. This didn’t erase the fact that there were much fewer crownsguard than gnolls, and it was impossible to keep up with all of them pouring in.

It was a long night to say the least. Homes, businesses – everything was raided with little regard for which was which. The grocer’s and butcher’s were hit the worst; they cleared out every shred of meat they could find, piled it onto carts and stuffed it into bags and left nothing, not even bones, in their wake. Pets went missing – taken in the sweep without a doubt.

The worst, though…the worst was the people who were taken. Missing person’s reports flooded in within the hour once the last gnoll had retreated. The reports weren’t even really necessary; they had seen the abductions – people dragged from their homes by claws and teeth, children snatched, screaming, from their parents’ arms. It was…it was one of the worst things Bryce had seen in all their years in the crownsguard, and they had been stationed at the Xhorhas border not long out of Bladegarden.

The Starosta blamed Bryce for the situation, of course – not a word for lack of funding or understaffing in the ‘guard. It was the Watchmaster’s responsibility to protect the people, and, well, the people hadn’t been well protected enough.

There was no question of waiting for another attack. The locals had already called an emergency townhall meeting and were preparing a sort of militia to patrol. It was mostly farmers and gung-ho residents that were spoiling for a fight anyway, but these were dire times, and Bryce was secretly relieved the people, unlike the Starosta, were focused more on action than blame at this point. It wouldn’t be enough if the gnolls came back, though. And so, some planning was in order.

Someone had to go after the gnolls at the source. It wasn’t an appealing job – as stated before, there had been attempts in the past to root out the gnolls at the source. If they didn’t have enough people for it before, well, they certainly didn’t now with many of their officers injured from the fight the night before. But in the very least, _someone_ had to do something, perhaps thin out the numbers enough to discourage another attack. And, gods, there were civilians taken – some of them _had_ to still be alive. Hopefully. Bryce refused to think of the alternative.

So, the next day, Bryce gathered a few of the best of the crownsguard, and they all set out for Rill’s Mouth, sure that at least some of them weren’t going to be coming back out.

They went down in the middle of the day with the hope that most of the gnolls would be sleeping after the commotion of last night. The mission was primarily one of extraction at this point – they put silencers on their weapons and scrounged up some flashlights so that they could navigate while bringing minimal light sources.

They were all prepared for the handful of gnolls they found guarding the upper tunnels. They were _not_ prepared for the handful of freshly dead gnoll corpses they encountered. Nor for the person, unfettered and unafraid, wandering around in the complete darkness – no flashlight and no goggles. He was a tall, spindly man with dark skin and white hair that was almost as shocking as the white of his pupils. He was armed with a pair of long, wicked looking knives – the type you use for more than just cooking – and a pet hummingbird of all things. He didn’t say as much, but Bryce got the impression that it was some kind of familiar and the man had the talent for magic. How else could a blind man navigate the winding tunnels so efficiently?

The man introduced himself as Shakaste and apparently was something of a local, having grown up in the Marrow Valley. When they asked what the hells he was doing hunting gnolls in an abandoned mineshaft, he simply explained that he ‘liked to check in on the area’ once in a while and had heard there was something of a commotion.

Bryce was not usually one for letting regular civilians get their hands dirty with something that was purely the responsibility of the crownsguard. But, well, Shakaste had clearly made it this far without trouble, and, as said, he had the impression of a magic user about him. It wasn’t like sending him back up the shaft alone was a much safer option in any case.

This ended up being a good choice, as Bryce quickly began to realize that they and their fellow crownsguard were out of their depth on this one. They blamed it on the fact that it had been night when the gnolls initially attacked. There was little time to get up close and personal with the beasts – you just had to shoot, and if it stayed down you moved on to the next one. It _also_ didn’t help that the things were thick furred; how was one supposed to tell if a patch of skin or two was missing when you were basically picking off living carpets from thirty feet away? Well, that and the fact that there had been suspiciously few bodies left behind in town, even with all of the gnolls they shot down.

However, the dark of the tunnel made up for low visibility with an up-close and personal view, however, and it didn’t take long to notice that something was deeply wrong with some of these gnolls. At first, they thought simply that some of the beasts were ill, which might have also explained why they had been desperate in their hunting. Upon close inspection, though, Bryce saw that the missing clumps of skin were not festering rashes or even open wounds, but areas where skin and flesh had sloughed off altogether, leaving the bone underneath exposed and stark. In fact, many of these gnolls were more bone than anything else, fur and skin pulled back and barely clinging to the body in some cases.

It was difficult to keep some of the crownsguard from abandoning the mineshaft altogether, after that. Shakaste, surprisingly, was a huge help in that regard, keeping calm despite clearly knowing what they were looking at _somehow_. No one wanted to be outshown by a blind man who wasn’t even supposed to be down there. It helped when they found the first of the captives held together in a tight room off of an offshoot tunnel that they wouldn’t have even noticed if not for the man’s keen listening. From there, the focus was mostly on keeping the survivors calm and making sure none of _them_ noticed that some of the gnoll corpses were distinctly more dead than others.

The hardest part was when they stumbled upon one of the larger dens, apparently interrupting the feasting of almost a score of gnolls who were not happy to be interrupted. They held up surprisingly well, considering, and Bryce was distinctly curious about how a civilian like Shakaste got so good with a pair of knives. They did not have the chance to ask.

Once they had cleared out the room, they had the displeasure of noticing that this seemed to be some kind of food storage area. The space was dominated by two large fire pits that filled the area with light and made clearly visible the piles upon piles of meat heaped along the walls, bleeding and buzzing with flies. Bryce liked to believe they had a strong stomach. Some of the other crownsguard were not so lucky. The only plus side was that any bodies that may have been…utilized had already been butchered if the pile of bones in the corner was any indication.

Bryce did not pay much attention to the horrified whisperings of their fellow crownsguard or the survivors that, unfortunately, had followed them into the room. They were much too busy picking over the fresh gnoll corpses to make sure they really were well and truly dead and they hadn’t overlooked any sad soul to get dragged in here for butchering. But Shakaste stood off to the side on his own, and they did hear him a bit, conversing with his Duchess.

“More the flesh’s ilk than violence, looks like,” they heard him say, stroking a finger over the hummingbird’s head. “Talk about double-dipping, though.”

Bryce had no idea what he was talking about – there was certainly plenty of violence in this place, and they were almost offended on the part of the survivors. They left it, though. Better to have a discussion about all this away from more traumatized ears and out in the sunlight.

On the way out of the den, Shakaste took a few sticks from one of the cooking fires and tossed them onto the piles of meat, setting them alight. The smell of cooking flesh chased them down the tunnel, and Bryce reevaluated how strong their stomach was.

It didn’t take long after that, surprisingly. Shakaste was effective with his Duchess, able to scout ahead to avoid groups of gnolls that couldn’t be picked off and able to locate the rooms where the other captives were being kept. The mineshaft continued down into the darkness, deeper into the earth where more gnolls waited, but it seemed that the people they took were kept further up where it was less steep and easier to move them around.

The rescue operation ended successfully, although a more extensive gnoll extermination would have to wait for Bladegarden to send more crownsguard. Shakaste didn’t stick around long after they got the survivors back to town, but Bryce did manage to pull him aside briefly in an attempt at getting some information out of him. His background living in the region seemed legitimate enoughS. When Bryce tried asking about how he didn’t seem surprised by the state of the undead gnolls or the sheer extent of their activities, though, he became tighter lipped.

“Some things aren’t meant for every pair of eyes,” Shakaste said, strangely enough. “Don’t sweat the details – you’ll live a lot longer, Watchmaster.” 

Bryce wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but in any case, Starosta Kosh had laughed off any mention of undead gnolls that made it into their report. Which is what brought them here, in the end; one last attempt to make a full, accurate report, they supposed. Still, they were dead sure (all puns aside) of what they had seen down there, and, if anything, Mr. Shakaste’s encouragement to forget had reassured them that something was deeply wrong indeed. 

* * *

“So, like, do you think zombie gnolls and zombie lizardmen are the same thing?” is Jester’s logical question once the recording is done and the paperwork drawn up.

“Gnolls and lizards are two completely different things, though,” Nott – because for some reason she’s sitting around the desks with them – offers sagely.

“Hold up,” says Fjord, “I didn’t think the lizardman himself was a zombie. Just turned other people into zombies.”

“Oh, well, yeah, that’s a good point,” Jester says. “Do you think, like the gnolls met the lizardman? Or did they turn themselves into zombies? Do all zombies come from lizardmen, or do gnoll zombies come from somewhere different?”

“I think that maybe all zombies are mostly the same type of zombie,” Caleb says consideringly. “Once you are undead you are undead. But, ah, it could be that there are different ways of _making_ zombies. I have never heard of lizardmen having a particular ability for it, so I doubt they have a commodity…”

“Nah, like, I’m pretty sure there’s gotta be other ways of making zombies,” Beau agrees. “Didn’t there used to be like, necromancy and shit? Those guys made zombies, right?”

It’s only 11:00 in the morning. This is probably the most productive they’ve been in over a week, but, also, she kind of needs a drink.

“So, like, you think these are all questions we could maybe answer by talking to someone in the zombie gnoll town,” she ends up suggesting, because as fascinating as this is, they do eventually have to do something other than speculate.

“Sure, Beau, I can make the calls,” Jester volunteers, saving her from having to bother someone else into doing it.

Beau has no idea what Jester ends up saying in the voicemail she leaves for the Watchmaster’s office at Alfield. In the past month, they haven’t had a single call returned directly with anything other than a, “Sorry, not interested,” or, “I have no more to say on the matter,” or, “Lose this number.” All she knows is that, _this_ time, she gets a call forwarded to her office phone the next day, and she’s stunned to hear that it’s actually Bryce Feelid on the other end calling her back.

“Yes, your assistant was quite, uh, enthusiastic in the voicemail she left,” they explain in a bemused but thankfully not hostile voice. “The message cut off before I could actually hear what it was exactly you wanted to ask, but I understand this is about the gnolls incident?”

“Oh, yeah,” Beau says, scrambling for a pen and notepad. “Thanks for, uh, thanks for getting back with us.”

“Of course,” there’s something like a smile in their voice now, and Beau is definitely not used to that on these sorts of calls. It’s weirdly nice. “I was informed that it was ‘super crazy important’ to your ongoing investigation and that you ‘need to know whatever I know about zombies, like, yesterday,’ so I gathered it was urgent.”

…Maybe having Jester handle the calls wasn’t the best idea. Then again, clearly, she’s gotten results, so.

“Yeah, uh, definitely,” Beau says. “We reviewed your statement recently, and I had a couple of follow-up questions. Some of the stuff you mentioned might be relevant to a current investigation.”

“Yes, well, I’m just a little surprised, I guess. I gave my statement over half a year ago and hadn’t heard anything.”

Right. “We’re under new management. New system and all that. We’re going back and reopening several cases that we feel might have been…overlooked under the past filing system.” Gods, did anyone even _read_ half of these before tossing them in a box?

“Ah, alright. That makes sense, I suppose,” Bryce lets it go, thankfully. “I have to admit, I’m a little relieved. We ended up getting the staffing backup that we needed, but, as I said, the Starosta was reluctant to look into anything else.”

“Bureaucratic bullshit, probably,” Beau sympathizes, then remembers she’s supposed to be a Professional and probably shouldn’t be saying stuff like that to the patrons.

Luckily, they just laugh lightly. “Yes, you’re probably right. In any case, ah, what did you need to know for your investigation?”

Beau sits up a little straighter in her chair and readies her pen over the note page. “Right. You described some of the gnolls in your statement as ‘undead.’ Could you elaborate on that?”

A slight pause. “Elaborate on…how undead they were?”

“Yeah,” Beau prompts, “like, you said they were missing some skin, but, like, specifically what did they look like?”

“Well, it varied between them quite honestly. Some were barely noticeable, but others were mostly skeletal. Not, um, not _thin_ – their skeletons were exposed.”

“Whoa, like, zero skin? How did they move – was there, like, muscle connecting everything? Joints and stuff? Fleshy bits or no fleshy bits?”

Another, longer pause. “Ah, I suppose there was, um, flesh involved? It was dark in the tunnels, and I didn’t get too close a look at finer details? But, ah, I suppose where the fur and skin pulled away there was some exposed muscle and …viscera.”

Beau hurries to jot that down. “Huh, okay, that tracks I guess.” It sounded like the victims in Trostenwald were left with less in the way of skin and had more bones and flesh exposed, but maybe Adelaine had been exaggerating, or maybe the presence of fur on the gnolls hid more nastiness. “And they went after both the live villagers and pre-existing stocks of meat from the town?”

“Yes, everything that they could find that was, er, meat related. Anything that was or could…become meat?”

“Alright,” Beau jots that down ‘indiscriminate meat cravings.’ “Have you seen any lizardmen in the area? Like, right before or since the incident.”

“Lizardmen?”

“Yeah, like, a big lizardman.”

“No, not that I can recall. I’m pretty sure someone would have noticed that this deep in the Empire. Is this…relevant to the gnoll problem?”

“I might be,” Beau assures them. “We are currently on the lookout for a lizardman in the vicinity of undead occurrences, possibly accompanied by a young dwarf girl and a purple tiefling.”

“I…I definitely haven’t seen anyone matching that description. I didn’t even know tieflings could be purple.”

“These are strange circumstances,” Beau pushes forward, not wanting to get sidetracked. “If you hear from anyone about a sighting, please let us know.”

“I can do that,” they say tentatively. “I wasn’t aware that the Cobalt Soul took such an…active approach to their investigations.”

“New management,” Beau repeats. “On that note, one last question. This individual that you mentioned, Shakaste. Do you happen to have any way to get in contact with him? We’re interested in reaching out.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised he’s not one of yours,” Bryce admits. “That’s kind of what I had assumed. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to get in contact with him – he didn’t leave me with a phone number or anything to contact him with.”

Damn. Well, there goes that nice little mote of possibility. “Alright, well, please let us know if you happen to hear from him again.”

“Will do,” they agree. “Was there anything else you needed from me?”

“Yeah,” Beau says. “Is there anyone else you can think of – any other witnesses or any associates who have had experiences with these types of gnolls – who might have any information of interest? About the gnolls or strange lizardman sightings.”

“Strange lizardman sightings,” Bryce echoes with some baffled sort of amusement in their tone. “Not off the top of my head, no. To be fair, people aren’t fond of coming to the Watchmaster with gossip. But you know, actually, I might know someone in your area that _would_ hear about that sort of thing.”

\---

So, technically the follow-up for the Alfield case is done with the phone interview – nothing new really to be gleaned there. So _technically_ there’s nothing more for the archive crew to do with it other than, well, archive. Anything more is just creating more work for herself and the others, and she hates work.

Beauregard has a sticky-note stuck to the edge of her desk with the name Claudia Sheed and a bar name scribbled on it, and it’s _itching_ at her.

She walked out of her office at 4:55pm exactly. No extra work here. Leaving early in the middle of the week like the slacker she absolutely is. Fjord and Jester are packing up their shit and chatting, and they look up when she walks over.

“You guys want to go for a drink?” she blurts, completely interrupting whatever they were talking about.

Fjord raises an eyebrow, “Ooh, drinks with the _boss_? What’s the occasion?”

Gods, was this weird? Was this not a thing working people did?

“No, I mean, like, no _occasion_. I’m just – you know no big deal, just figured it’d be nice to, like, hangout. A bit. Outside of work I mean.”

Jester makes this squealing sound, and, suddenly, she’s right in front of her, grinning, and – oh, okay this is okay, apparently? This is good?

“Oh my gosh, _Beau_! You want to hang out? Of course we want to hang out with you! We’re _friends_ , right!”

Oh, that was…that was actually really nice. Jester thought they were friends? Damn. Did Fjord think they were friends, too?

Fjord was leaning back casual-like in his chair. “I guess I could be persuaded to go out for a few rounds.”

Jester swatted his shoulder. “Of course you’re coming _Fjord_! We all have to go – we’re the Archive Crew!”

Just as Beau’s about to comment on the team name, a green face peaks around one of the shelves, and a yellow pair of eyes narrows at them.

“I heard mention of getting drinks,” Nott says.

Beau opens her mouth to protest. Beau had low-key forgotten that Caleb and Nott were still here and hadn’t really intended to extend the invitation past Jester and Fjord, who she knows she can probably tolerate past work hours.

Jester claps her hands together gleefully. “Yeah, we’re all going together. Do you want to come?”

Beau closes her mouth. She resigns herself to whatever chaos this is slowly devolving into.

“Well, alright,” Nott says as if she hadn’t barged in on the topic in the first place. “Let me go excavate Caleb, and we’ll come.”

“I didn’t mean right _now_ ,” Beau starts, but no one is listening to Beau anymore. This is maybe going to be harder than she thought.

\---

It becomes apparent pretty quickly that the Leaky Tap isn’t exactly the prime choice for coworker bonding or morale building or….whatever this is masquerading as. It’s pretty far from the library, for one thing, located all the way on the other side of the pentamarket and on the East Outerstead. It’s also like, not a place you’d exactly be impressed with your boss bringing you to, for another. It’s definitely not the seediest bar Beau’s patronized before, don’t get her wrong. But it’s rowdy, and it’s a bit rough around the edges in a way that this side of town is. And while Beau is comfortable with that – comfortable with this end of the city in general actually, from too much time sneaking out during her training days – it occurs to her a bit late that this _probably_ isn’t the type of place that an archivist of the Cobalt Soul would drag their assistants too.

No one says anything about it. Nott makes a v-line to grab a table before they’re all fully in the door, hood still pulled up to hide most of her face and that creepyass doll mask she carries around obscuring the rest. Jester – with all of her designer clothes and prim posture – slides into the booth like she owns the place and orders a glass of milk of all things. Caleb is…well he doesn’t act weird, but he’s visibly in need of a shower.

In retrospect, if anything, they’re probably the ones lowering the property value just by being here.

“So, first round’s on Beau, right?” Nott asks, voice slightly muffled from behind that god-awful mask.

“Nott, are you even old enough to drink?” Fjord interjects before Beau can process that fully. Fuck, is that was bosses are supposed to do? Goddammit, she’s only just gotten her first paycheck for this gig.

Nott stands up in her seat so that she’s almost eye level with him. “I’m an _adult_ , Fjord.”

Beau slides a questioning glance at Caleb over Nott and Fjord’s heads while they bicker. He gives a noncommittal shrug that confirms fuck all. Eh, it’s probably fine. Those two aren’t her responsibility anyway.

“Come on, you guys!” Jester butts in before Nott can start drawing blood. “We’ve been working together over a month! We’re hanging out and celebrating, right?”

“Yep, celebrating!” Beau confirms, raising her glass. “Totally celebrating.”

Fjord squints at her. “You sure? Cuz you don’t sound very enthusiastic.”

God fucking – who’s he, the party police? So she’s a bit distracted, fucking sue her. “What, you don’t think I’m happy to be here? I’m the one who invited you.”

“Course not,” he said, completely unconvincing. “You just seem a little…tense is all.”

Beau pauses scanning the room to give him a look. “Tense? Me?”

“Yeah, he’s right, you do look tense.” Jester nods.

“I’m not –” she hesitates, lowers her voice to less of a snap – unclenches her jaw and relaxes her shoulders a bit. “I’m not tense.”

“I think the waiter thinks you’re going to punch him,” Caleb chooses _then_ to enter the conversation. “He’s avoiding coming back.”

“He’s probably scared of Nott!” Beau protests, catching herself mid-scowl. Fuck – dammit so what if she’s a bit tense? That’s what drinking’s _for_!

“He’s definitely scared of you,” Nott argues. “You look like you’re here on a hit job. You have a murder face.”

“I do not!” She can’t help but turn back to Fjord. “I don’t, right?”

He gives a noncommittal noise and wavers his hand in the air. She slams her glass down on the table, and the waiter flinches across the room. Everyone’s a critic.

Fjord puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. You’re under a lot of pressure.”

“Yeah,” she mumbles to the table.

“Been a while since you’ve gotten out, huh?”

“Maybe.”

He gives her shoulder a pat and raises his voice to flag down their reluctant waiter. “Another round.”

“I’m not even done with this one,” Beau points out.

“You’re definitely going to need another.”

“Not the house stuff, it’s piss.”

“Something strong,” he specifies before turning back to her. “It might help if you didn’t insult someone’s drinks to their face.”

“Not like he made the stuff,” she argues. Fjord continues giving her a Look. “Fine. How did _you_ get so good with…people stuff then?”

“Well, it just takes practice. Don’t tell people bad things to their faces. Try not to look like you want to punch ‘em.”

“Right.” That’s all basic – she knew that already, right? She could do that easy. She does her best to relax her face muscles and soften the scrunch of her eyebrows into something that’s not a furrow.

“There you go,” Fjord encourages. “Open and approachable.”

“Open and approachable,” she echoes. Gods, she needs to be ‘approachable’ if she’s gonna get information out of anyone. She leans her arm on the table, nice and casual-like. She can do approachable. She throws on a smile.

“It looks like you’re trying to seduce someone,” Fjord tells her.

She melts her lips into something wider than her go-to flirting grin.

“That’s…” Fjord starts.

“You’re even scarier than before!” Nott shrieks, jabbing a finger at her. “Stop, stop!”

The little devil’s lucky she’s on the other side of the table and harder to shove. 

“We’ll work on it,” Fjord promises.

Beau chugs the rest of her drink.

The lager that the waiter brings goes down a little easier, and, by the time that one’s in her system, the sting has mostly worn off, and everyone’s moved on to talking about something that isn’t her social prowess. Jester is intent on telling Nott about the Traveler (no surprise there). Fjord seems more interested in shaking down Caleb for what he knows about magic, but the guy seems pretty determined to say as little on the subject as possible – or maybe It’s just the growing crowd of the bar filling up around them that’s getting to him.

They’re on their third round (which is more like Nott’s fifth) when Beau figures it safe enough to wander off without it being too weird, citing a need for the restroom. She manages to grab the attention of one of the staff – who isn’t their attending their table – and ask after Claudia Sheed. The woman seems a bit reluctant to track down her boss, but, after a bit of pressing and dropping Bryce’s name, she disappears into the back to go see if she can track her down. Beau is left waiting in the hallway by the restrooms, trying not to look too awkward.

A couple of minutes later, a middle-aged looking elf woman shows up, hair pulled back in a loose bun and an apron tied over her clothes. She gives Beau a curious once-over and motions for her to follow her down another hall and into a room that Beau presumes to be her office.

“Claudia Sheed,” she introduces herself once they are out of the bustle of the main part of the bar. “What can I do for you?”

“Beauregard Lionett,” Beau says. “Archivist for the Cobalt Soul. I just, ah, we’ve been in contact with Bryce about a past statement, and they mentioned you might have some helpful information for us.”

Claudia raises an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware that the Cobalt Soul rubbed elbows much with crownsguard. I assumed that was for the press to deal with.”

“Yeah, we’re not, like, writing up a formal report or anything,” Beau clarifies. “This was more of a follow-up about an…interesting first-hand account they gave as a record for our archives.”

Claudia’s brow stays high oh her forehead, but she sits, settling in at her desk. Taking that as a promising sign, Beau takes a seat in the chair across from her.

“How exactly do you think I can help?” she asks.

Here’s the tricky pitch. “We at the Magnus Branch research and collect accounts of…nonstandard magical or paranormal occurrences as a record for public safety.”

Across from her, Claudia doesn’t blink.

Beau sighs. “I’m just – have you heard about anything…weird going on around Zadash or anywhere else near here?”

Claudia’s other brow climbs up to join its twin. “‘Anything weird’ is pretty broad. Magical and preternatural, you said? What, like ghosts and the like?”

And _there_ was the skepticism. Gods, Beau could grow to hate this job. “Not exactly. We study incidents not readily explained by our current knowledge of arcana and planar interactions.”

“Like ghosts,” Claudia deadpans.

“Yeah, sure, like things that look like ghosts, _maybe_ ,” Beau allows reluctantly. “Look, I know how this sounds – I’m not a fucking – we’re not some kind of ghost hunting weirdos, okay? Bryce encountered something _nonstandard_ a while ago in Alfield, and we’re trying to track other _unusual_ creatures happening in that area so that we can get an idea of what might _actually_ be causing problems.”

Claudia still doesn’t look completely convinced, but she’s not laughing her out of her office yet, so that’s something. “And Bryce recommended me for this?”

“They said you’ve got connections. We don’t need anything _specific_ from you. Just an idea of what kind of gossip is coming out of the area between here and Trostenwald. Have there been any strange accidents happening lately? Any strange people or crimes or attacks? Anything people can’t explain?”

“I’m not really sure I’d be the best person to ask for that sort of thing – most information I get tends to center around here in Zadash,” Claudia admits, but she looks thoughtful. “Trostenwald, you say? Well, I did hear something a while back about an incident with the owner of a circus causing problems.”

“Yeah, we got that one,” Beau interjects. “Anything else?”

“Nothing so specific as that, I’m afraid. I’ll admit, though, I’ve had a couple of people coming in from that direct sounding a bit spooked. Never had much to talk about once they got into their cups, just hearing things out on the roads.”

Beau sits up eagerly, “Hearing things? Like what?”

“Not too sure,” she says. “You know how people like to talk – can’t keep even a true story straight between tellings. I’ve heard everything from the sound of whistling to the haunting performance of an entire symphony orchestra. I really wouldn’t think much of it – the only reason I bring it up at all is since a couple people have made the claim now, this last month.”

“Whistling and orchestras, huh. Is it always music?”

Claudia hums thoughtfully. “Maybe. More often than not, at least. That’s about all I’ve got, I’m afraid. Like I said, I’m not really the best for that sort of thing.”

Ah, well, that’s about the best she’d expected, actually. “That’s alright. You don’t happen to know of anyone else that might have their ear out on this sort of thing, would you?” Unexpectedly, Claudia hesitates, and suddenly, Beau’s leaning forward in her chair. “Who?”

“Look,” she says after a long moment, “Now this _really_ isn’t my business. _However_ , if you really are asking to try to help…if you’re looking into that sort of business, there _is_ a certain, ah, gentleman that might be willing to talk with you. For the right price, of course.”

“Of course,” Oh, _now_ they were getting somewhere! “A certain gentleman. How might one arrange such a talk?”

She snorts. “Good luck with setting that up – like I said, not my usual business. I _can_ tell you that the place to go is a club in the outer ring called The Evening Nip. Tell them you come bearing many gifts. That should at least get you in the door.”

Beau nods and gets up from her seat. “Thanks. This has been really helpful. To our research, I mean.” With her best effort, she tries a smile.

Claudia looks away very quickly. “Right. Well, if you talk to Bryce again anytime soon give them my regards.”

Beau sees herself out.

\---

“Where did _you_ get off to?” Fjord asks when she slides back into the booth next to him. Nott is _still_ deep in her drinks, and Jester seems to have switched targets for religious conversion, though Caleb seems to have mellowed out enough not to mind much.

“Ran into someone interesting,” Beau says.

“Oh?” Fjord looks fifty percent more sober and one hundred percent more uncomfortable. “You uh, need to split? You know if you want to head home with someone–,”

“Not that kind of interesting,” she corrects. Gods, if only it were that kind of interesting. She could use the distraction of a nice night with a complete stranger. “Word on the street is people have had some interesting encounters between here and Trostenwald.”

Fjord goes from looking uncomfortable to looking downright baffled. “Are you _working_ right now?”

“No” Beau says, and it’s definitely not defensive.

“Wait, is that how you heard about this place? That’s why you dragged us to the other end of the city?”

“No!” Dammit, she definitely should have paid for another drink for him.

He shakes his head, leaning back in his seat as if to really look at her. “I did not expect this from you.”

“I couldn’t go to a bar during work hours!” Beau protests and jabs a finger at him.

“I thought you were the Head Archivist. Thought you could do what you want.”

“I _can_!”

“Oh, _can_ you?”

“Man - maybe I wanted to investigate a bar _after work_ okay?”

“We’re investigating the bar?” Jester chooses that moment to catch their argument. She leans in eagerly. “Is the bar haunted?”

“Gods,” Nott slurs, “of course _you_ would take us to a haunted bar.”

Beau is not even close to drunk enough for this. By the time she _is_ drunk enough, she’s also drunk enough to forget that she’s supposed to be a goddamn professional, and she ends up getting in a fistfight with some guy. She wins (according to Jester) but also gets them kicked out (according to Caleb). Then they end up with three out of the five of them trashed and standing on the side of the road in a kind of sketchy area of the city on a weeknight.

No one makes it into the office before eleven the next day. Beau is really glad she technically sets her own hours.

\---

This is probably a bad idea. But, it’s not the first bad idea she’s acted on this week, and she might as well continue while she’s on a roll.

The address on the statement submission form leads her into the Outerstead again, though this time the south western side instead of clear across the city, at least. It still takes her the better part of any hour to find the place, and by the time she’s standing in front of the shabby micro hotel it’s already starting to get dark out. The good news is the receptionist easily remembers Yasha when Beau gives a description and asks to leave a message for her. The bad news is that apparently Yasha hasn’t been staying there for the past two weeks and didn’t leave any way to contact her further.

At that point, Beau figures she’s pretty much shit out of luck; that’s the end of the Trostenwald follow-ups. They’ll never get closure on the weird lizardman wandering the empire, creating zombies. She’s just starting to ponder calling it a night and finding another shady bar to get drunk in on yet another weeknight when she notices it.

There’s a big van parked in a lot tucked between a dinner and a tattoo parlor that sets off all of her internal alarms. The back windows have been busted out and replaced with plywood and duct tape, and the whole thing is covered in a thin layer of white paint that, even from a few yards away, doesn’t hide the impressions of wild illustrations and a former logo that lie underneath. It’s not even, like, a _good_ attempt at painting – it’s like someone took a regular bucket of white paint and slathered it over the whole thing. In a few spots gaudy yellow is still poking through.

It definitely looks like the sort of van you would kidnap innocent pedestrians with.

Instead of hurrying on by like a clear-headed individual, Beau pauses and leans forward, scrutinizing the logo underneath the white. In the sparse light of the nearest streetlight, she barely makes out the words “Fletching and Moondrop.”

Beau hops the fence rather than walk five feet to the lot entrance. The van seems dark and still, but maybe that’s just the plywood making it hard to see in. She gives a knock on the side of the van.

For a moment, there’s no response. Then, the back door to the van pops open, and a person leans out far enough to stare at her: a familiar pale face and mane of black hair that fades to white, eyeliner smudged to hell and back and blinking blearily at her. She looks disheveled and displeased at being disturbed, but, after her eyes scan over Beau, her frown subsides.

“Oh,” Yasha says. “It’s you.”

“Yeah,” Beau says, shoving her hands in her pockets. _Look casual. Look like you totally meant to find her here._ “Sup. You, uh, living out of your car?” _Fuck. No, don’t ask about that._

“I couldn’t afford to keep staying in a hotel,” she says, not seeming bothered. She steps fully out of the van, standing to her full height. She’s not actually that much taller than Beau, but it feels like she towers over her in all of her gorgeous, terrifying glory.

“Oh,” _It’s cool, we’re cool._ “You, uh, heard anything about your friend?”

Her expression, mostly neutral to this point, falls. “No. If you’re seeking me out, I assume you’ve found something.”

That _would_ be the ideal scenario. “I’ve heard some stuff from around the Marrow Valley area. It could be nothing, but…” She hesitates. Gods, did she jump the gun? Should she have tried gathering more information first? It’s already been weeks, though, and this is all they’ve found.

“You said Toya’s act was singing, right?” Beau asks, “That was her thing?”

“Yes, she was a very good singer. She – Kalre really enjoyed her singing. We figured it was part of why they bonded like they did.” Yasha narrows her eyes at her. “Why?”

“There are some stories about people hearing music in the area between here and Trostenwald. People tell it like the area’s haunted but, well, I figured if they settled in that area, then maybe…”

“Then they might be hearing Toya,” She looks thoughtful.

“Look,” Beau continues, “There have been some other reports of things turning undead in the past months. This was in Alfield, but-”

“We didn’t go through Alfield,” Yasha interrupts.

“I _know_ that, but don’t you think that’s too big of a coincidence? I know you said you’d never seen Kalre do anything like that before, _but_ what if there’s something else?”

“Something causing people to turn other people undead?” Yasha asks, and, yeah, she sounds skeptical.

“Or something drawing people with…zombifying abilities in? Fuck, I don’t know man, but it doesn’t _feel_ like a coincidence.” She feels dumber the longer she stands here explaining. Man, maybe she should have talked this out with Jester and Fjord first.

“It does seem strange,” Yasha agrees, thankfully.

“I was wondering if you guys had ever encountered something that set Kalre off – not like in a _necromantic_ way or shit but like, made him agitated or something – while traveling in the Marrow Valley.”

Yasha is silent for a while. “I did not know Kalre very well,” she admits. “But if strange things are happening in this specific area and you think people might be hearing Toya…Thank you, this is useful information.” She sits back on the back bumper of the van and looks like she’s about to retreat again.

“Wait!” Beau says, though she doesn’t quite know what possesses her to. “That’s it? You’re just gonna head out with only that to go on?”

“All I need to know is where I can find Kalre.”

“And what are you going to do when you find him?”

“Kill him,” Yasha says as if this should be obvious.

Okay, fair. But – “How are you going to make sure that goes better than the last time you fought him?”

Yasha leans back, pulls something long out of the back of the van. A metal baseball bat. She hefts it and holds it out to show her in answer.

Beau throws her hands up in exasperation. “He turns people into zombies, man!” Granted, she definitely looks strong enough to be able to do some damage, but Beau stands by the fact that this fucker had turned ten people according to Adelaine’s statement. “What happens if he has any of those with him? Or makes more?”

Yasha frowns, lowering the bat. “I can get a second one. I have two hands.”

God fucking – “Let me go with you.”

“What?” Yasha asks.

Okay, that’s fair – this is _definitely_ a bad idea. But, dammit, all she’s got is an archive of fake ghost stories and a lifetime of filing and bullshit in front of her and, fuck, if this is going to be the _one_ interesting story that comes through her hands she wants to _at least_ see how it ends, even if it’s not zombies or whatever. Also, she doesn’t really want Yasha to die and her odds don’t seem great.

“Let me come with you,” she repeats. “You want your friend back. I want to see this lead through.” She raises her chin in that way her father always hated. “I’m a monk of the Cobalt Soul. I can hold my own in a fight.”

Yasha stares at her, the mis-matched colors of her eyes barely distinguishable in the light of the streetlamps.

“Okay,” Yasha says.

“Okay?” Beau echoes, startled.

“You can come,” she elaborates. “But my priority is getting Molly back. Do not get in my way.”

Beau crosses her arms over her chest. She doesn’t offer a hand to shake – that would make this feel like some bad deal made in the dark or something. This is part of her _job_ , she tells herself. Zeenoth handed her the archive, and she’s going to run it how she sees fit.

“Fine,” she says, and the course is set.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Undead gnolls, depictions of corpses (animated and unanimated), an uncomfortable amount of meat, discussions of people being eaten, alcohol consumption.


	4. Not(t) the Best Detective Agency

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for all of your comments and kudos!
> 
> So, I didn't originally intend for this chapter to be a Road Trip chapter, but I ended up having to split it in half because it was already too long. In any case, please enjoy the shenanigans.

Beau makes it into the archive on time the next morning more by mistake than anything. It’s on her way out of the Cobalt Soul, and she’s just stopping in to grab a few things before heading out for real. Also, she’d feel kind of like an ass not saying anything to anyone. She leaves a message with Marius at the front desk to pass on to Zeenoth, and she’s in the middle of stuffing some papers into her duffle when she becomes aware of the concerned stares of her assistants.

“Beau,” Jester asks, “Are you going somewhere?”

Beau straightens, runs a hand through her hair to tame the stray strands falling out of her bun. Tries to look a little less like a maniac. “Uh, yeah, about that. You guys mind holding down the fort for a few days? I’m going on a, uh, business thing.”

“Where?” Fjord asks, baffled. “What ‘business’ thing?”

“I, uh, found a lead,” She admits.

“On the zombies?” Jester demands.

“Without _us_ ,” Fjord demands, somehow sounding the more scandalized of the two.

“Uh, yes?” Fuck, why were they looking at her like that? “Look, this is all super last minute – sorry I didn’t have a chance to give you a heads up or whatever -”

Jester slaps her hands down on her desk, and across the archive the room to document storage slams closed. “Are you going zombie hunting without us, _Beau_?”

Oh. “I mean. Maybe? Technically, it’s for research or whatever-”

Someone clears their throat at the bottom of the stairs, and for a moment Beau’s afraid that it’s Zeenoth and he’ll stop her before she can leave. Instead, she’s greeted by the now familiar sight of Caleb, awkwardly hovering in the entrance with Nott stalwartly at his side.

“Is, uh, is this a bad day to come in?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Fjord says, crossing his arms. “Beau says she’s going on a ‘research trip’.”

“You know, I don’t like your tone,” Beau complains.

“Oh?” Fjord raises his eyebrow, and doesn’t he just look the picture of skeptical. “Just where is this research trip?”

She purses her lip. “You know…around.”

“Around?” Fjord says flatly.

“Yeah, you know, we’re just, uh, surveying the area – the Marrow Valley area.”

“ _We_?” Jester sounds _scandalized_ , “It’s a ‘ _we’_ now, and you didn’t invite _us_?”

Oh gods, this conversation was going to kill her before she even got _near_ a monster. “What? No, it’s just – listen, I spoke with Yasha last night.”

“Oooh, so it’s you and _Yasha_!” Fjord snarks. “That explains it.”

Mother _fucker_.

“Who’s Yasha?” Nott pipes up.

“Beau’s new _girlfriend_ apparently,” Fjord says.

“Do you mean Yasha Nydoorin, the statement giver for your mysterious lizardman statement?” Caleb asks, finally bringing some rationality into the situation.

“ _Yes_ ,” Beau says, “Exactly. I talked with Yasha about the _statement_ , and we might have come up with some idea of where we might find Kylre and Molly.”

Jester doesn’t look quite so outraged anymore, but there’s still a pout on her face. “Beau, if you want to hang out with Yasha, we understand, okay? But we’re your _assistants_! You’re supposed to let us help you with the research stuff!”

Beau’s about to fire all of them she swears. She levels them with what she thinks is a stern, boss-like expression. “You all just want to get out of the basement and maybe see a zombie, don’t you?”

“ _Yes_!” Jester cries. “No offense, Beau, but it is, like, _so_ boring down here sometimes!”

“It really is,” Fjord admits.

“I thought you didn’t want to go anywhere near ‘fake zombie bullshit,’” she accuses him.

“I don’t,” he admits. “But please don’t leave me here alone in the spooky basement with all the paperwork.”

Well. Fair enough.

She looks to Caleb and raises an eyebrow.

“Um,” he says, “I do not want to be an intrusion. However…”

“The archive’s closed if the staff’s all gone,” she confirms.

His lips tighten into a flat line. “Excuse us for a moment.” He pulls Nott off further into the archive, behind one of the tall shelves dividing the room. There’s the sound of harsh whispering and high-pitched outrage from Nott. After a few moments, the two return to the bullpen.

Caleb clears his throat. “A research outing sounds very, ah, interesting.”

Beau runs a hand through her hair, almost hard enough to dislodge the whole bun. “You _guys_ ,” she complains. “This wasn’t supposed to be an _invitation_.”

Fjord shrugs. “Then you should have just sent an email.”

 _Gods_ , Yasha is going to kill her. 

\---

Beau had agreed to meet Yasha near the entrance to the Pentamarket at ten sharp, which conveniently only gives the others a little less than an hour to grab whatever shit they might need for a road trip and get there or else they’re definitely being left behind.

She was _hoping_ this would give her a leg up on ditching them.

Caleb and Nott, however, claim they don’t have anything in particular they need and elect to make the walk over with her. She tries not to dwell on that too hard, though it does nothing for the lump of trepidation that was growing the longer she interacted with them. Fjord luckily – or unluckily – doesn’t live too far off from that end of the Interstead Sprawl anyway, and it’s more or less close enough that he can stop by his apartment to grab some stuff. Jester somehow shows up with almost a full set of luggage.

“I thought you lived all the way in the Trispire,” Fjord says with no small amount of confusion. Beau nearly spits out her drink because, yeah, logically there’s no fucking way she would have made it all the way there and back and still had time to pack. Also, what the fuck, _Beau_ can’t afford the Trispire, and _she’s_ not on an assistant’s salary. “How’d you have time to pack and get here so fast?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jester says like it’s not a big deal. “It was gonna be a pain, so the Traveler gave me a lift.”

“The Traveler?” Beau demands. “Like, your _god_ the Traveler?”

“Yep! I told you, he’s super cool!”

Caleb looks like someone has slapped him clear across the face. “Your god – he helps you teleport places?”

“Well, no,” Jester says, waving him off. “He just creates a _little_ shortcut. But it’s still _super_ amazing – way cooler than teleporting, probably.”

“A shortcut,” Caleb repeats, looking no less skeptical.

“Yeah,” Jester says. “You know, I bet he would do it for you and Nott, too, if you’re interested!”

Caleb looks like he really wants to ask but also hasn’t had enough coffee for it. Mercifully, he lets it drop. “I will, uh, keep that in mind. Thank you.”

Beau kinda wants to probe more – because, no, really, what the fuck – but before she can a familiar shitty van pulls up to the curb.

When Yasha rolls down the window there’s already an unsure expression set in the crease of her brow.

“Um,” she says, eyeing the rest of the archival staff (and guests), “I’m here for Beau.”

“Uh, yeah,” Beau starts talking quickly because Jester is already halfway to yanking the van’s door open. “About that. I, uh, brought some backup?”

“Oh, don’t mind us,” Fjord drawls, putting on his best polite smile. “We’re along to assist that one,” he jabs a thumb in Beau’s direction, “with research.”

“We’re here to kill zombies!” Jester has her luggage halfway loaded and is hefting her bags like a pro—wrestler. Damn.

Yasha is looking at Beau. She does not look very happy.

“They followed me,” Beau protests. “I totally did _not_ want them to come.”

“Rude,” Nott hops into the van behind Jester once she’s done loading all her shit – fuck, they’re going to have to squeeze a bit. There’re two rows of seats back there, but there’s already circus stuff and shit on top of all their bags.

This was definitely a bad idea.

Yasha is still staring at Beau as she slides into the front seat before Fjord can snatch it. Yasha doesn’t shove her back out onto the street, though, so this is totally salvageable.

“They can use magic?” Beau tries hopefully.

Yasha’s expression doesn’t change, but she looks back to the road and starts the engine. “Magic is what started this.”

“I thought zombies are what started this,” Jester chimes in from the back. She’s seated herself in the middle seat at the perfect vantage point to lean in between the front seats and join the conversation.

“Alleged zombies,” Beau corrects, though there’s really no point at this point.

“Same difference,” Yasha says.

Beau is almost tempted to beg to differ and is weirdly disappointed when Caleb is too battling his way past a box of weird circus stuff to do it himself. It doesn’t matter, anyway whether the zombies are legit monsters or the result of some messed up ancient magic. The point is that they get an answer either way. Research and all that.

As soon as the van door slams closed behind Fjord, Yasha pulls back onto the road. No argument or protest and no fanfare about it. The six of them are packed into a small circus van and heading towards…something.

\---

With traffic it takes them around half an hour to get through Zadash alone. After that…well, there are apparently somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion potential stops scattered throughout the Marrow Valley. A good number of those are truck stops and gas stations, existing for the express convenience of helping people remove themselves from the middle of nowhere as soon as physically possible. There’s also a couple of camping grounds around that are maybe a little too hospitable to a van full of colorful strangers poking around asking weird questions. They turn out to be less helpful than Beau had been counting on.

The rest are tourist traps. It’s tourist traps all the way down.

“World of yarn?” Beau says skeptically to the map. “What, is it some kind of yarn museum? Or is the building _made_ of yarn?”

“Who cares, we’re just looking to see if anyone there has seen or heard anything interesting,” Fjord points out.

“What if we have to fight Kylre in a building made out of yarn?” Jester wonders. “We could just, like, get him all tangled up in it, and then we’re good!”

“What if _we_ get tangled up in it?” Nott points out.

“Worried about you claws tripping you up?” Beau askes.

“No, _I’m_ a master of grace and stealth. Fjord, on the other hand, bumbles around like he’s got no knees.”

“I do _not_ ,” Fjord sounds more offended than Beau’s ever heard, and she has definitely insulted him better than that before.

“I highly doubt the lizardman is hiding in a house made out of yarn,” Beau interrupts.

Kylre is _not_ , in fact, hiding in the World of Yarn – which is, disappointingly, not made out of yarn. They get a tour of the different varieties of yarn spun from wools grown from various farms in the region, though, which is…not entirely mind numbing but pretty close. They get to see some cool models of sheep, which Beau accepts as the closest to interesting as they’re going to get on this stop.

She’s wrong on that count because when they’ve finally gotten to talk with the owner of the museum Yasha pulls out a photo from her pocket that looks like a group shot of a bunch of colorful people.

“We’re looking for this man,” she says, pointing to a rainbow given physical form in the shape of a purple tiefling that stands next to her in the picture. “We suspect he may be found with this girl,” she points to a little dwarf girl standing in the front of the group, “who was taken by this man,” and here she points to a hulking figure on the edge of the group.

Caleb all but snatches to picture from the kind human woman who runs the yarn museum after she confirms she hasn’t seen any of them. “

“This is Kylre?” Caleb asks, squinting at the picture.

“Yes,” Yasha confirms.

“And he is a lizardman?”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m pretty sure? It’s not like I asked him.”

Caleb is doing that thing where he stares down a piece of paper until it reveals all its secrets to him. “He looks, ah, more like a frog than a lizard.”

“Wow, man,” Beau can’t help saying. “That seems pretty insensitive.”

“No, that’s not – I don’t,” he gives her and Yasha a flustered look. “I am pretty sure I have seen something like this before.”

“What, really?” One point for the ‘guest scholar.’

Out in the parking lot, Caleb uses Beau’s phone to do a search on ‘devil toad’.

“Look,” Caleb says, scrolling through the search results. “Here it is.” He holds up the phone to show an online article with pictures.

Beau grabs the phone from him so that she doesn’t have to crane her neck, drawing protests from Fjord and Nott. “Dude, what were you studying in the past that would bring to an article on… are these types of _fiends_? Whoa.”

“I read lots of things,” Caleb sniffs. “The point is, I do not think your friend was really a lizardman. He is mostly likely a-” He grabs the phone back from Beau and scrolls further down the page until he finds the image he’s looking for, “-a nergaliid.”

Sure enough, the illustration next to the section of the article that Caleb has found shows a large, frog-like creature that resembles Kylre’s form pretty well.

“I, uh, don’t really know anything about fiends,” Yasha admits. “Is this bad?”

“Do nerga-whatevers usually make zombies?” Jester asks, stretching on her tip toes to see over Yasha’s shoulder and get a look at the phone screen.

“It says that they can feed on the people’s ‘life energy’ or whatever, but that’s kinda vague,” Beau says.

“Well, they are supposed to be a relatively old species,” Caleb says. “It is possible that at one point in time, back when magic in the prime material plane was more, ah, potent, they might have had that sort of ability? That would be…strange to say the least if they still retain that ability, though.”

“Yeah, well, ‘strange as shit’ is why we’re here,” Beau points out. “Either way, not a good sign if we’re looking to find Toya and Molly to be, well, _alive_.”

Yasha turns sharply away from the phone and starts walking towards the van.

“Let’s go,” she says when the others linger after her. “We need to get a move on.”

Beau and Caleb share a look as he hands her phone back. There is a grim set to his face that echoes what Beau feels in the pit of her stomach. Mollymauk has been missing for over a month. There is no reason to think he’ll be with Kylre when they find him – or that he’s not long dead.”

Beau takes her phone and tries to shake off the feeling. “Nice catch, nerd,” she tells him.

Caleb frowns, “You know, you work in a library, so actually-”

She runs to catch up with Yasha before she can threaten to leave any of them behind. The other woman’s face is an impassive mask, but Beau catches the determined set of her shoulder and the anxious dig of her fingernails into the steering wheel.

“I’m sure we’ll find him,” Beau says, just softly enough that it shouldn’t carry to the back seats over the chaos of Nott’s complaining and Jester’s laughter.

Yasha says nothing, but she jerks her head in a nod, which is close enough.

 _It’s just research_ , Beau reminds herself when she almost feels bad for the lie.

\---

It turns out that being packed into a small van is much worse than being packed into the archive. For one, there’s no reason for anyone to pretend to be productive or competent. There’s a steady enough flow of bullshit that Beau doesn’t dream of actually looking at any of the statements she brought to look through, and, even if she was bored enough to try meditation, there’s too much distraction anyway. By the time early evening rolls around she’s sick of watching the scenery, and she can only snatch so many looks at Yasha’s biceps without it crossing into weird territory.

She’s just starting to contemplate napping when Fjord unearths a set of swords from one of the boxes in the back.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, running his finger along the flat of one of the blades. Beau doesn’t get the best look from where she’s sitting, but they look less dangerous and more the sort of thing you would show off on a wall. “Where did you get these?”

Yasha spares a glance from the road to look back at what he’s holding. “Oh, those. Those are Molly’s, actually.”

“Right. Is Molly, like, supposed to be a medieval assassin or something? What’s a circus man need swords for?”

That actually gets a snort from her that might have been a laugh. “For juggling, mostly. Though they can have other uses, sometimes.”

“Uh-huh,” Fjord looks dubious. “Other uses…like stabbing?”

“Sure.”

“Ooooh, we could fight Kylre with them!” Jester suggests. “Wouldn’t that’s be, like, poetic or something? We could rescue Molly using his swords.”

“Can you even _use_ a sword?” Beau points out before the gleam in Fjord’s eye goes too far. She’s not entirely sure if worker’s comp covers unsanctioned road trips, but it’s probably better they don’t find out.

“Maybe,” Fjord says, not looking up from the ridiculous things. “I’m multifaceted.”

“You’re full of shit is what you are,” Beau says. “There’s no fucking way you’ve ever used an actual weapon before.”

“I might dabble.” Fjord shoots back.

“Dabble in _swords_? How? _Where_? _Why?_ ”

His eyes slide to the side. “Oh, you know. Just something me and some of the crew I used to be a part of would do on the weekends.”

Well that answers exactly fuckall. “So, what, like fencing or something? Wouldn’t you need a saber?”

“Not exactly.” He is definitely avoiding meeting her eyes. There’s a slight tint creeping in on his cheeks.

 _Oh,_ Beau realizes with glee, _this has got to be something embarrassing._

“So, you and your guys would just hang out on the weekend and…what, play with swords? Where did you get the swords? How did you afford them? Ever cut someone’s arm off?”

“Gods no!” Fjord snaps. “They were – they didn’t have real edges on them.”

Beau raises an eyebrow, leans further back into the back when he turns entirely away from her to hide his face in the window.

“So, they were fake swords.” Oh, she has a good feeling about where this is going.

“They were _models_ ,” Fjord concedes.

There is a grin stretching on her lips that she doesn’t quite feel the need to suppress. “Oh, so like, _fake_ sword fighting then.”

His eye twitches – just barely, but she catches it. “It’s real fighting Beau. Based on real sword techniques.”

“Sure, sure.” Oh gods, this was _great_. “Didn’t really peg you for the historical reenactment type to be honest.”

He turns just enough to shoot her the dirtiest look she’s ever seen. “I’m not. It was just for fun, alrigh-”

“Wait,” Beau says. She has an inkling.

“Wha-”

“So, you and your guys just went out and did fake sword fights-”

“Beau, it’s not-”

“with fake swords in your own free time-”

“Beau, I’m serious-”

“As organized outings – not for historical accuracy-”

“I _mean it_ , I-”

“Oh my god,” Nott beats her to the punchline, her eyes wide as dinner plates and a wide smile curling around her jagged teeth. “Fjord’s into LARPing.”

Fjord opens his mouth and lets it hang. His face flushes a darker shade of green.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Beau barely gets out over Jester and Nott’s howls of laughter suddenly shaking the van. “Fjord, what the _fuck_!”

“It was years ago,” he protests.

“Yeah,” Beau asks, “how many?”

His mouth snaps closed, which is answer enough as far as everyone else is concerned. Even Caleb, huddled in the back with a book, is hiding a smile at his expense.

“Oh, come on!” Fjord snaps at her, but there’s little actual heat to his voice. “Not sure you’re one to talk, anyway. At least I’ve got something I can use as a weapon.”

Beau smirks. “Come on man, I’ve got a pair of guns right here!” She leans further into the back to flex her biceps at him.

Nott finally composes herself, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “Impressive. I’m sure Caleb and I will have fun saving your asses when you try to punch and stab a monster lizard to death.”

Okay, wait, this conversation is officially taken a turn for the insulting. “You do know I’m a monk, right?”

“Yeah,” Nott says. “Aren’t monks supposed to be pacifists or something?”

Beau almost loses her entire shit right then and there.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa – easy there!” Fjord leans forward and grabs her shoulder before she can rip the goblin’s hair out at the roots. “She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know, alright!”

“The Cobalt Soul,” Beau explains through her teeth, “Is an order of _warrior_ monks, specially trained for fighting.”

Nott crosses her arms. “Well, _excuse_ me. Why would you need to be trained to fight? You’re all basically librarians.”

“It’s tradition,” Beau says. “We’re supposed to be…protectors of knowledge or some shit.”

Nott narrows her eyes, as if suspicious she’s lying. After a moment, though, she nods. “Okay, that might be _kind_ of cool, I guess. I could see Caleb doing that sort of thing – you know if he wasn’t so scrawny.”

“Ja, I’m not interested in punching things,” Caleb interjects.

Nott pats his hand. “You don’t need to be. Your magic is more than powerful enough.” She looks thoughtful for a moment. “Fjord should probably try his luck with the swords, though.”

“I don’t like what you’re implying,” Fjord says.

“Don’t be self-conscious, Fjord. It takes years to get as good at magic as Caleb.”

Beau’s attention is drawn back to the front, where Yasha is gripping the steering when tight enough to make the faux leather protest loudly. 

“I think,” she says, staring straight ahead, “this may have been a mistake.”

\---

Beau finally remembers to check her phone at the third truck stop they end up at. She can barely hear the automated voice of her voicemail over the sound of an 18-wheeler pulling into the lot behind her.

_“You have **three** unheard messages. First unheard message:_

“Beauregard, it’s Zeenoth. Marius said you’ve left on some kind of outing. None of your assistants seem to be around. Beauregard, you cannot just leave whenever you feel like, and you _cannot_ leave the Archives unattended. This is why we hired you multiple assistants. Please call me back as soon as you get this!”

_“Next unheard message:_

“Hi Beauregard, it’s Zeenoth. I am once again trying to reach you as no one seems to be monitoring the archives. As I’m not sure how long you intend to be gone, I will have to continue to reach you by phone. _Please_ call me back when you get this message!”

_“Next unheard message:_

“Beauregard, as you are _still_ apparently out of the archive and unreachable, you have _several_ research inquiries to your inbox for review whenever you happen to get back. Please in the very least update your email to alert other staff of your absence so that they can know to expect delays.”

The last message cuts off with a soft _beep_.

“Shit.”

\---

It takes until around two in the morning for them to finally get Yasha to call it a night. Her eyes are drooping, and Beau argues that it won’t serve anyone if they miss something because they’re too tired to focus. Fjord volunteers to take the wheel and let her sleep, but, apparently, Yasha’s not a fan of relying on someone else’s eyes and ears. Instead, they pull over into a small park and resolve to rest up for a few hours.

Beau takes a few minutes to help the others pull out some sleeping bags and snacks. There’s a strange camaraderie to it all –

She sits for a bit, watching, pondering something like companionship.

Then, she slips out the van with just her phone and the bag she grabbed from the archives. There’s a picnic table and small copes of trees at the edge of the parking lot. She perches on top of the table and sets her phone to flashlight mode. It’s not great lighting, but it’s enough for her to sort through the stack of files she brought until she finds one that catches her eyes. She has to dig a big to find the tape recorder where it’s been pushed to the bottom of the bag.

“Statement of Clarabelle Clay,” she reads to the night air, “detailing the corruption of the Savalirwood. Recorded by Head Archivist Beauregard Lionett, Cobalt Soul, Magnus Branch. Statement starts:”

* * *

The Blooming Grove was home to the Clay family for as long as there had _been_ a family Clay. As servants of the Wildmother, they had tended the garden for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and in many ways the Savalirwood with it. They were no strangers to rot. As those charged with seeing the deceased returned to the earth, they were curators of both the life that the garden bore as well as the decay that nurtured it.

The Savalirwood was rotting. It had been for as long as Clarabelle Clay had been alive and for generations before. She had heard that it was not always this way, of course. Once it was the most beautiful, sprawling of wood and stood testament to the glory of the Wildmother. The Blooming Grove had stood as practically a glade then, one patch of flowers amongst many – a single cultivated plot of flowers amongst a veritable sea of growth and bounty. Now, though, now the trees were gray and sunken – plants shriveling and dissolving into piles of fungi and mush as the too moist earth hungrily ate away at young and old growth alike. Mold and mildew crept along trunks and rocks and dirt like the mosses and lichens that came before it. It brought dank smells and thickened the air with spores and moisture that choked lungs. It painted sodden greens and blues and purples across the forest floor where flowers and ferns once made their homes. Even the animals abandoned their dens as sprouts and shoots turned chalky and pulpy with disease, and flies and worms began to burrow and brood in living flesh as well as dead.

The Savalirwood was not dying. Not in any way that counted, really. A corpse may be buried and consumed slowly – the growth of mold and maggots takes a while to exhaust what resources are there to be consumed and converted, but in time it would be exhausted, and the decay would have nowhere left to spread. But the Savalirwood was not a corpse. It was not dead and was not dying. It breathed, and with every breath new plants grew, feeding on tepid gray light filtered through browned leaves and rotting branches. With each breath its roots sank into soaked earth and sought out nutrients from richer soils, anchoring themselves deep beyond shovel’s reach and shooting out vines and leaves and bark like spores to find clear airs and unfilled lungs. The infection grew, bit by bit, until no part of the wood was left uncorrupted.

No part, except for the Blooming Grove. That was where Clarabelle was born and where every Clay ever reared was born, and where every Clay had made their home since ever there were Clays. Now-a-days it was less of a grove and more of a humble garden. Most of the old grove had been gradually lost to the rot over the past generations, leaving less and less to tend with each Clay to come. By now they were down to a single yard with a fence built higher and higher. They did their best, tended the flowers and put the dead to rest. But outside the graveyard gates the rot spread and pushed against their iron barricade. Each year the divine defenses that protected the Wildmother’s grove waned.

When Clarabelle was a little girl, it was decided that something must be done to combat the rot. Her mother and aunt were the first to leave, armed with what divine magics the Wildmother allowed them and their own wits. She didn’t know exactly what their plan was – to find a cure, or perhaps to seek the Wildmother’s wisdom. Either way, that was the last she saw of them.

A year passed. Eventually, her father grew restless. He too decided to set out, this time alone. In his stead, he left their eldest sister, Calliope in charge. He promised to be back within the year and never returned.

And just like that the four Clay siblings were left to tend the grove. Each year the rot crept in and each the iron gate rusted. Clarabelle could remember spending days staring out at the ruins of gates passed – three rusted shells curled around their home as markers where past Clays has failed to keep the decay at bay. She wondered what would happen when the last one fell. She wondered at the buzzing of flies and sprouting of mushroom rings just beyond the bars of their shelter.

Calliope was more patient than their father. She was no less wary, however. On the day that the worms showed up – pale, writhing things crawling along the hollowed-out tree roots and bloated animal corpses that had appeared overnight – Calliope ended her vigil and packed her bags. She did not say how long she would be gone, just promised to bring back their parents and a solution. And so, she left their brother Colton in charge, seven Clays became three.

Calliope did not return either. Clarabelle didn’t remember how long it was before Colton grew restless. A couple of seasons? A couple of years? It was hard to tell passage of time with the change of weather when the trees remained gray, and the air stayed moist and oppressive. Clarabelle marked the hours by the growth of thick gray patches of mold and the gradual creep of the worms. She tracked the movement of their thick wiggling bodies across the ground, felt her heart quicken and her skin itch when they meandered too near to the yard.

When Colton left, he didn’t bother to make any promises. He patted her head and told her to listen to Caduceus, and then he left, trudging off into the graying wood without a backwards glance.

It was not as hard as you might think, tending the garden with just the two of them. There were the flowers to be minded and tea to be made. Otherwise, well, it wasn’t as if they had many visitors or new ‘residents’ to put to rest – not many were willing to brave a forest of rot to bury their loved ones.

So, for a long while it was just her, her brother Caduceus, and the worms. Technically, the worms should not have counted, but after a while it was clear that none of the other wildlife was interested in visiting, and the only other constants were the mushrooms and molds, and neither were much more appealing. 

Clarabelle didn’t know, exactly, if worms had eyes, but she thought they did. She felt like they were watching, in any case, the way they lingered close to the gate – they had to know that she and Caduceus were there. She wasn’t sure why they didn’t just burrow under the ground to get to them but figured it had to be for the same reasons that nothing decaying could grow through it. She wondered how long the blessing protecting them would last.

That was what got to her, in the end – the wondering. How long would the gate hold, and how long would the worms wait?

Caduceus was the next eldest. This waiting game they all were playing – who would remain patient and who would give first? Logic would dictate it would be him. One more Clay to leave the grove and then? There must always be a Clay to tend the Blooming Grove. She could not follow him once he was gone, and then what? Wait there? For how long? For what? What could one Clay do that five before them could not? Who would wait for Clarabelle Clay, then – the worms?

No. Not if she had a say in it.

Clarabelle did not wait, in the end. She hoped Caduceus would forgive her. She did not even wait three months before she gathered her things together and her wits about her.

“I will be back,” she promised before she left. “I’ll bring them back to you.” She believed it, but maybe not as much as she should have to be leaving so soon. She understood why Colton didn’t look back, in the end. Beyond the gates of the Blooming Grove she felt eyes upon her.

That was what brought here now, in any case. She doubted any of them had come through Zadash or found anything useful if they had. She doubted they would have been drawn to look in a library, either, but at this point she had better start getting creative in her search if no one before her had been successful so far.

She hadn’t found any trace of them yet, you see, but she was getting close. She could feel it. She _would_ be the one to bring them back. She would find something to protect the grove. She just had to find the cause of the corruption behind it first.

* * *

“Sounds lonely,” Jester’s voice says right by Beau’s shoulder, picking up only a brief moment after the sounds of her narration fall off into the night.

Beau jumps – nearly drops the damn tape recorder. “Gah! What?”

“That girl in your statement,” Jester says, having the good graces to mostly hide her grin at Beau’s startlement. “She and her brother were stuck in the middle of a forest, just waiting for their family to get back. All _alone_.”

“Except for the worms,” Beau points out.

“Except for the worms,” Jester agrees. “They don’t sound very nice, though.”

“Nah, they don’t,” Beau agrees. She hopes Jester doesn’t notice the tremor in her hands as she stuffs the statement back into her bag.

“Did she find something to fix it, you think?” she wonders. She slides over to sit closer to Beau, their arms almost touching. “Or her family?”

Beau sits back, pulls her legs out from under her perched position and say back to let them dangle over the edge of the table. “Who knows? The statement’s almost ten years old at this point. Doubt following up will do much good.”

“I hope she did,” Jester says. “It can’t fun, being just two people on their own for that long– even I had more than just my mama around.”

“Yeah,” Beau says, though truthfully that particular worry hasn’t really occurred to her before. Gods, she almost _wishes_ she grew up in a big, worm filled forest if it meant _her_ parents weren’t around for it. That’s not exactly something Jester seems like she’d want to hear though, so, instead, she says, “What’re you doing out here anyway? Thought everyone was sleeping.”

“I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d do some sketching.” Jester hefts a thick book that Beau hadn’t noticed in her hands until now. The spine is bent and heavily creased, and it looks like about half of the pages are trying to come loose – well-worn and well-loved. Something about it sets off a warm, fond feeling in Beau’s chest.

“I didn’t know you draw,” she says. “You know, except for dicks and stuff.”

“I draw plenty of things.” Jester cracks open the book and flips to the latest page. “See, I drew the worms in your statement.” Sure enough, on the page is a serious of cartoonish looking squiggles that are pretty good representations of worms, a couple of them with angry faces and little vampire-like fangs. On the next page over there’s a drawing of a person with a gardening hat chopping up worms with the end of a spade.

“Were you just…sitting here the whole time I was recording?” Beau can’t help but ask. She might not have dark vision, but she’s pretty sure she’s observant enough to notice someone sitting at the same table as her.

She nods. “Most of it. I heard you get out of the van and thought you might have gotten up to poop or something, but you didn’t come back, so I came out here to make sure no zombies had gotten you.”

Beau can’t help but crack a smile at that. “Aw, thanks Jess.” She’s not sure what just the two of them would have done against a zombie, but it’s a nice thought.

A peaceful quiet settles between them the likes of which Beau wouldn’t usually associate with Jester. But it’s…nice, Jester content in her sketching and Beau left to digest the contents of yet another unsettling statement without the pressure to talk about it. Beau’s not sure how long it sits with them exactly. Long enough that some of the itchy feeling under her skin has mostly calmed. So, she doesn’t startle when the sound of pencil scratches pauses, and Jester turns to her.

“Do you think we’re actually going to find Kylre and Molly and Toya?” she asks in a voice so soft Beau almost has to lean in to hear her.

“I don’t know,” Beau admits. “I mean, I hope we do.”

“Because you want to find out if zombies are real or because you want them to be alright?”

Beau stares up at the stars – pretends she doesn’t know the answer. “It can be for both reasons, right?”

“Right!” Her voice is a little louder, a little more characteristic for a Jester comment. The pencil scratching resumes.

Even after they’ve both turned in – for real this time – it’s a long night.

\---

Day Two does not shape up to be much better than Day One. They take the approach of covering less road and asking more questions, which seems like a good enough idea at first, until Jester and Nott decide to take the lead.

“Where were you a month ago?” Jester demands of the halfling gentleman they’ve managed to corner next to the manticore statue made out of discarded tires.

“U-um,” he stutters, eyes bouncing between her and Nott like he’s not sure which one is more intimidating. “At home, probably? I don’t know.”

“You don’t know or won’t tell us?” Nott shouts, slamming her hands on the picnic table in front of her.

“I don’t know!” he wails. “I live in Hupperdook – I was there with my family all month I swear.”

“Uh-huh,” Jester puts on her skeptical voice. “A _likely_ story. And how many lizardmen do you know in this ‘Hupperdook?’”

“L-Lizardmen?”

Nott tugs on Jester’s shirt to get her to lean over so that she can whisper in her ear. This is a useless gesture because Beau can still hear them both from twenty feet away. “Jessie, I think we established he’s actually a frogman, not a lizardmen.”

“Oh yeah, thanks Nott! And how many _frogmen_ do you know in Hupperdook?”

The poor sod looks so confused he’s about to cry. Beau finally gives in to pity and walks over to them.

“Hey,” she says to the guy, “Hupperdook is north of Zadash, right?”

Wide-eyed and desperate, he nods.

“That’s pretty far from Trostenwald and Alfield,” she remarks to Nott and Jester.

“Too far from the scene of the crime,” Nott says, scratching her chin.

Jester immediately moves to mimic the gesture. “Yeah, and it would, like, really suck to walk that far. Especially if you’re a frog person.”

Nott leans in close to the halfling’s face. “Your story checks out. _For now_.”

Jester nods sagely and holds up a finger. “Don’t go anywhere – we’ll be in touch!”

Blessedly they start walking with Beau back towards the van. Behind them the halfling man shouts a confused, “But I have to leave, I’m on my way to Zadash!”

They rejoin the others, Nott and Jester with smug smiles on their faces.

“What’d you find, _detectives_?” Fjord asks.

Nott jabs a thumb back at the poor guy they harassed. “That guy seems clean, but we might have to check his alibi.”

“We’re not going to Hupperdook,” Beau says. Pauses. Thinks back on where she’s heard the name ‘Hupperdook’ before. “Well, not right _now_. We are _definitely_ going on a bar crawl there some day.”

“Ja, I don’t think this is working,” Caleb cuts in. “We’ve been to five different sites today and it’s already 12:34.”

“Could have been six if we didn’t take so long at the last convenience store,” Beau points out, raising an eyebrow at Fjord.

“That kid started it!” Fjord protests.

“That’s what you get for hitting yourself in the face with a circus sword,” Beau also points out. “ _Anyway_ , that one lady at the last fast-food stop said she’d heard music at that campground off of Route 40.”

“I thought we determined that was some dude’s radio?” Fjord argues.

“No, the lady from the giant mushroom stop was the one who heard some guy’s radio. This one was totally legit.” Probably. “Yasha, you said you last saw Kylre and them closer towards the border, right? So, following Route 40 towards the boarder makes sense.”

Yasha grunts an affirmative. “I doubt he’s gotten _that_ far with Toya and Molly in tow. Unless he stole a car. I don’t think he can drive though.”

“Would be kinda hard with the weird frog hands,” Nott agrees.

“I wouldn’t think frog hands would really be a hinderance,” Caleb says. “They might help him hold onto the wheel better.”

“I think it’s because he doesn’t have a license,” Yasha deadpans, blessedly killing the topic of frog hands.

“So further south,” Fjord redirects.

“We’ll need to up our detective game,” Nott says.

“No,” he groans.

“We’ll do the good cop/bad cop routine,” Nott continues.

“ _No_ ,” he begs.

Looks like it’s going to be a long day too.

\---

_“You have **two** unheard messages. First unheard message:_

“Beauregard, it’s Zeenoth again. I assume that you are still out on whatever ‘business’ you deemed important enough to abandon the archive for as none of the archival team showed up this morning. This is highly unprofessional! In the _very least_ you should consult me before taking your work out of the library.

_“Next unheard message:_

“‘I’m hunting zombies; catch you later’ is _not_ an appropriate auto-reply for your emails, Beau! Call me _immediately_.”

\---

They stop a little earlier that night. Probably because Yasha is sick of them. This idea is supported by her taking her sleeping bag and spreading out under the stars far away from the car instead of enduring another night of Nott’s snoring.

Beau forgoes another statement. There’s still a bit of exhaustion clinging to her bones from her turning in late the night before. Which is bullshit because she used to stay out all night drinking and fucking and fighting not even a year ago. Responsibilities have aged her a hundred years.

She should have known better than to expect getting to bed early with the Detective Squad around though. Jester shoots up from the very back of the van with an excited cheer before Beau’s head has even manages to hit the pillow.

“Guys, guys, guys, look what I found,” she says, shoving something over the seat and into the moonlights. Beau, of course, doesn’t have dark vision, so she’s forced to squint to make out what appears to be a deck of cards held reverently in her hands like a sacred chalice or some shit.

“Tarot cards?” Fjord asks in that grumbly sort of voice that says he too was about to head to sleep.

Sure enough, the cards have illustrations on their backs with the familiar labels of a tarot set. The drawings and paint job are striking and delicate but has a sort of wobbly, imperfect look to it that makes Beau think it might be hand-made.

“Didn’t Yasha say Molly does tarot?” she asks.

“Yeah, isn’t it cool?” Jester’s already shuffling the deck, no reverence for the missing and possibly deceased apparently. “Do you think he’ll give me a reading after we find him?”

“Guess you’ll have to ask,” Fjord says in a tone that indicates he’s hoping this will end the conversation. No such luck.

“Beau, pick a card,” Jester demands, flaring out the cards in her hand.

“You ever done tarot readings before?” Beau asks.

“Nope! I think I’m gonna learn. Now pick a card!”

She has her hand outstretched, fingers brushing the splayed deck when she hears it – a faint sound in the distance, like a voice.

“Hold up,” she says, pulling back and leaning towards the window.

“Beauuu,” Jester pouts, but Beau shushes her.

With the van quiet, she hears it again, a faint, lilting sound just barely there on the edges of her hearing. She shifts to her feet and pops open the door to the van.

“Did you hear that?” Beau asks, only realizing after the words are out of her mouth that she’s whispering.

“Hear what?” Fjord asks, answering her question.

She brings up a hand to shush him, and it comes to her again, more clearly with the door open. It’s a soft, wavering melody wafting through the trees. Low, and sweet, and winding – barely strong enough to brush her ears. Like a lullaby, she thinks. No – heavier than that. Like a dirge.

“Music. I think…singing.”

The song tapers off again, either finished or out of her hearing range again. Beau takes a step towards the trees and realizes that she’s standing.

“Do you think-” Fjord starts.

“Toya,” Beau agrees. “It’s gotta be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: TMA typical worms, descriptions of decay and rotting, mold and physical corruption.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to stop by and chat with me about CR or TMA on tumblr: [daezil](https://daezil.tumblr.com/)


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